slammer.

Today, my mother made me clean out all my Save Boxes in the attic. Growing up, Brunner children have Save Boxes. This means, my mom would get a big plastic tub and we could save things that were special to us. Apparently I had a lot of things that were important to me. Great things like that seed necklace I made at Girl Scout camp and that picture of me with Tigger at Disneyland (and yes, Beth Gandy, I am wearing the purple plaid Pooh Bear overalls. You can be jealous of my trendiness. I don't mind). But among those valued items, most of which are now in the trash, I found my Pog collection. And I'm keeping it. It will always be special and important to me. Especially that Pog with the hologram picture of a dolphin on it. And most importantly, my Apollo 13 slammer. When I was little I really wanted to be an astronaut. Fortunately, I did not pursue that career because I just heard that astronauts are about to not exist and we're sending the last group of people up into space very soon. Anyway, I have lots of space things that I found today, like autographed pictures of astronauts and fancy photos of the Hubble telescope. You know, really cool, non-nerdy things like that. And I like them. And I'm going to frame them all and hang them in my future single-independent-working-girl-Julie house.

It doesn't get any better than this.

And I found awards from things like the spelling bee and Destination Imagination that congratulate me on getting second place for something or another. And I found trophy's from that one year I thought it would be a good idea to try and play sports. And I found my bunny collection and my thimble collection and my rock collection and my bell collection. I tried to throw the rock collection away, but my mom wouldn't let me. She said the rocks are too shiny and special to throw away. My mom thought that everyone should have a collection growing up, so I guess I had 5. All I ever wanted to collect were shot glasses, but my mom wouldn't let me. I mean, come on now. What little girl wouldn't want to collect cute miniature cups that have pictures of bunnies on them? 

Bunnies and bowties. Things that children love.

But I guess my mom didn't want her 5 year-old to look like a huge boozer. So she just started buying me things like thimbles and bells hoping I would forget about collecting shot glasses. I didn't forget. For a while I tried collecting those little toothpick holders, but those are really weird so I stopped.  So, my point is that I now have numerous collections that will be gracing the bookshelves of that single-independent-working-girl-Julie house. And since it's my house I can do whatever I want. And I want to wear aprons, eat ice cream out of shot glasses, dance to Paul Simon and display my trophies, collections and autographs from astronauts.