I am like a comet

This is the first section of a multi-part essay:

I am like a comet. I started as a small particle traveling through space, and have slowly and steadily accumulated a nebulous array of particulate matter around me. We travel through life, and bits and pieces fall away, and others join, and attach themselves.

But just as major life events can lead to Earth-shattering revelations, they can also have cosmic consequences. My comet's tail shrank considerable when I moved out of my parent's house in November.

I had kept literally all of my schoolwork – class notes, homework assignments, papers, tests – from Kindergarten, all the way through four years of college. It was all filed neatly in brown cardboard accordion folders, one for each year of my education, and all stacked neatly on four book shelves in my childhood bedroom. And 99.99% of it hadn't been touched since it was filed away.

Then it was time to move out, and it was time to reduce the clutter. So I started with a random accordion file.

I’m sitting in my desk chair with the file on the floor between my feet. I've got a recycling bin on my right and a trash can on my left. I open the file and dive in.

I first pull out a thick ream of loose-leaf paper, covered with scrawling cursive script written in runny black ink. This file must be from high school. I flip through the packet to look for staples and then dump it all in the recycling bin without pausing to read anything, scared that I might get cold feet and stop the whole operation.

Next I find find some type-written papers. An essay Young Goodman Brown. I rip the staple out and throw it in the trash. The paper goes into the bin. “Why,” I think to myself, “would I ever want to relive my ninth-grade interpretation of Young Goodman Brown?” I continue through the rest of the file pausing every once in a while to read something that looks familiar or interesting. I eventually stumble on an essay that I remember writing for Mr. Weisberg’s English class. I remember being proud of it at the time. I flip through it. I’m still proud of the essay. I can’t bear to toss it. I turn around and place it on my desk. The comet can't loose all of its tail, or it would cease to attract the attention of those dreamy star gazers, who turn a glass eye to the night's sky.

Ostensibly, I was flipping through the papers to remove staples and paper clips and other things that would interfere with recycling. But the more papers I saw, the more I realized that I wanted another look at all this stuff I’d created. At some point in my life, I'd put time into creating these things, they deserved to at least be eyeballed before they went off to the pulp mill.

I continue the search, pulling out papers and flipping through them. Before I realize what I’ve done, the first file is empty, so I move on to the next one. Fourth grade, this should be funny.

I quickly find a black and white marble composition book with what appears to be weekly entries about things I’ve learned. On Dec. 2, 1994, I wrote: “this week I learned alot about detail drawing in art and a lot about mapmaking in soil stidys.”

I remember now that I couldn’t comprehend that ‘a lot’ was two words until about 7th grade. It’s funny, that detail seems so natural to me now. As far as I can surmise, I meant to write that I learned about mapmaking in social studies, as soil studies are not commonly taught in grade school. Oh man. If I’d only taken the time to look around my classroom when I wrote the entry. I’m sure that ‘Social Studies’ must have been written in bold, colored letters somewhere in our classroom wall. The highly-reflective book goes on my desk.

Now I’m going through files again. I find an accordion file from my junior year in high school. I’m flipping through notes from a class in bioethics. A few keepers, most for the trash. Ah, Algebra II, no need to flip through this, straight into the trash. My hand cramps as I rip the stapled corner off of a homework assignment. Sheesh, I got 6 out of 10 points. Not so good…

I’m drowning in a sea of paper. But as soon as I finish ravaging one file, I have to go for the next. I can’t stop the flow of rip, toss, grab, as I pick up papers, rip out staples, and throw out reams of paper.

I can feel my luminescent tail diminishing as each piece of paper hits the trash. And such is the cosmic cycle.

To be continued...