Hippoplatypies. i

I have three pounds of faux plastic pearls given me by a Vietnamese woman whose niece I helped in English.

A Fisher-Price tape player and recorder I got for free in first grade and used to record myself reading books because I was practicing reading aloud and wanted to get rid of the nasty nasal quality in my voice.

Found two skirts from third grade ish, put one on top of the other, and now I have either a very short dress or a very long shirt.

It’s really cute, though.

A half sheet of graph paper entirely covered with the name of an old crush in perfect cursive with flourishes. 

I AM ROMMIE THE WRITER. FEAR MY WRATH.

Found some particularly interesting bits of literature from my elementary school days.

One was a letter to a friend, and it said:

Dear Amanda,

I take Sunday classes and a boy in my class I hate said: Can you tell me something and I said yes and I said: Good bye

(The big words are especially important.)

The other was an essay I wrote in fifth grade on why girls and boys shouldn’t be separated in PE, which involved some really valid arguments about equality and not letting guys think they were inherently stronger than girls, and I got an A- on that, which disappoints me. I totally should have gotten an A+ because it was good.

And the last one was apparently a narrative from the point of view of a birch tree, which I gave the name Treena (get it, because it’s a tree), except when I picked it up to read, I read, “Hi, my name is Treena and I’m a bitch tree.”

Oops.

I just unearthed a Teen People Special Collector’s Edition from 1998 covering Prince William and the front says, “Prince William: Prince of Hearts.”

The entire magazine is full of some editor fangirling over Prince William since he was a baby I feel like such a stalker now.

GUYS REMEMBER THOSE ANATOMICALLY IMPROBABLY BARBIES BEFORE THEY MADE THEM ALL FATTER.

I HAVE THIRTEEN OF THEM AND ONE OF THEM IS A MULAN BARBIE AND IT CAME WITH DETACHABLE HAIR AND GUYS.

GUISE.

I CAN ATTACH THE HAIR TO THE BARBIES’ WAISTS AND GIVE THEM TAILS.

WHAT DO I DO I DON’T WANT TO GIVE THESE AWAY BUT I’M NEVER GOING TO KEEP THEM BUT I DON’T WANT THEM TO GO TO WASTE BECAUSE THEY’RE THE GOOD BARBIES NOT THE LAME ONES LIKE THE NEW ONES.

I found some letters from a pen pal who actually turned out to live across the street from me.

I found this journal where I started writing a story based off of a dream I had where I was in some kind of rebel/revolutionary group and lost all my friends to the evil people - not really sure why they were evil - and ended up dying myself and actually experienced dying in my dream. It was extremely weird.