All of my best titles are stolen from better people

During my last trip to California I found an old bag of mine, it came free with the lap top I got back in '99. (Jeez that 9 lb monstrosity nearly made it all the way through college with me but died just a year and half short) I haven't used this bag since about the winter of my senior year and only did a bit of emptying it when college ended and left the Land of Enchantment. So here in a place with far more water and trees than the desert that I went to school in I got a few presents.

It was like a delayed X-mas, thankfully no one gave me an orange, chocolate or other perishable that may have made this 4 year package all the more strange. Instead there was an invite to a birthday party for September 13^th and of course BYOB. An add slip for Journalism 105 but the interesting thing on this is that my signature hasn't really changed from the one I was using then. A copy of the 10/7/02 Round Up (Campus auto burglaries rising) and one from 11/11/02 (Insurance cards mailed late [real late indeed]), two thank you cards from 'The Laramie Project', a program from 'Africa A-Z', a Steer Skull bolo tie from a costume I wore back in the Halloween of 2000(?) and a red ribbon saying 'I promise to be drug free.'

Mentally I'm trying to come up with the rationale of why I have all this stuff. Some of it makes sense and some of it (like the skull bolo) is just odd and I'm curious why I would have carried that to class for 3 years or so. A side note to say I'm horrible about cleaning out anything. I horde things and only when I have to move, or transfer materials from one bag to another do I see the reason to empty a bag. Hell one bag I have has several old issues of the Weekly and Stranger from when I first moved to Seattle.
Not first moved maybe a couple months in.
I swear I'm not holding onto them as a memento I can throw them out at any time or so I keep telling myself. But isn't claiming you can quit at anytime one of the signs of an addict? If only I had the AA book I found and have been carrying (in another bag) since Februaryish.

Still all of this says something. But one question persists why don't I have a copy of the New Testament in this bag? I could have sworn that began in College, I know I had one for a bit in high school but was that because we had religion class? Wasn't it back then I had a green covered small copy of Psalms and the New Testament that I had received from campus crusade, newman, or just found on the ground by the New Library? Also I wonder if the coupons that are in the Round Up could still be used. One or two companies failed to print an expiration date on them but that means going down to Cruces to try and get my cheap sandwich, second soda with purchase of a soda or discounted suntanning.

At least there wasn't any old papers that may have changed a grade and caused me to reevaluate my academic career and maybe try my hand in another field that could have left me in a better (read: different) place. That's always a shame when that happens. Like when I cleaned out a bag before college and found an old story I wanted to submit before high school ended. Reading it again I didn't like it as much but at the time (high school Sal) thought it was the greatest work of fiction ever. Now (Late 20s Sal) would like to read that story again, perhaps I won't be so hard on my younger self or possibly I will agree with the arrogant college bound version. Either way there wasn't any work like that this time. Only a hand full of trinkets from a different time like a poor man's time capsule but, I guess, more like the volcanic ash covered town folk of a different time. Yeah that metaphor will do.

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