Time Capsule

I was eight years old in the fall of 2000.

At eight years old, I was lost in the depths of my Mary-Kate and Ashley obsession, but not quite old enough to fully voice my burgeoning feelings for John Travolta. I was hopelessly devoted to my one year-old cat, Saber, who attacked my bare flesh whenever the opportunity presented itself. I lived with my parents and my big brother in an inviting house on 12th Street.

The neighborhood kids and I spent most of our free time making mud pies and filling plastic bags with water so we could place them in the street and watch cars run them over as we giggled hysterically from behind the bushes. At eight, I had a few minor bruises on my heart but was mostly happy. I was eight. That’s what life is supposed to be like at eight.

In the fall of 2000, when I was eight years old, in between the barefoot afternoons and the familiar pangs of dread that came along with the start of a new school year, I created a time capsule.

Today, at age 26, surrounded by the fiery realities of life in 2018, I opened that time capsule. Most of what I found inside made me laugh. Some of it made me think. A bit of it made me sad, but all of it reminded me that I was once an eight year-old. It was a necessary reminder. It’s easy to forget versions of ourselves that feel so distant.

Here are ten highlights of my newly rediscovered time capsule from the year 2000:

1. The time capsule began with a short instructional note in which I introduced myself, provided a bit of background, and reminded the future recipient that the contents of the capsule should not, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, be thrown away. I can’t help but wonder why I assumed that an actual stranger would someday open the time capsule - that the box would be buried and uncovered centuries later by some alien life form who now occupied the section of land I once called home. Knowing myself as a child, I probably tried to dig a hole in my own backyard to bury the capsule, only to give up after realizing that my complete lack of upper body strength wouldn’t allow me to dig more than a few inches into the hardening September soil.

This note was the only element of the capsule that elicited a pang of sadness when I saw it. It mentions Lincoln Elementary, a place that still reigns supreme in my heart among all the spots I’m grateful to have grown in. Lincoln was an arts and literature-based institution, the only of its kind within Holland Public Schools. It was the site of my earliest creative expressions and the starting point for lifelong friendships. I couldn’t have known at the time this note was written that Lincoln would be closed less than a year later due to budget cuts.

I couldn’t have known that I’d see my dad cry for the very first time on our last day of classes at Lincoln or that the loss of a school, particularly one we’d all fought so tirelessly to keep open, would set the stage for the way I dealt with grief as an adult. I couldn’t have known that our sparkling new playground would be ripped apart to make way for Hope College’s massive new communications center and student radio station or that I’d rarely see my beloved Mr. Bell after third grade ended.

In a way, this note captures a moment in time that I can hardly fathom today - a time before I’d had my first bitter taste of loss.

2. On a far less nostalgic note, the next piece of paper simply read, “There used to be dinosaurs.” I can’t put my finger on why I deemed it necessary to include such a note, but apparently I was under the impression that humans of the future would lose track of all scientific understanding and somehow “unlearn” the fact that dinosaurs once roamed Earth.

In all honesty, though, the resurgence of climate change denial in recent years makes this “we-forgot-about-dinosaurs” scenario seem much less farfetched than it should. Was I a prophetic child? I guess we’ll find out. 

3. No time capsule is complete without a humiliating, era-specific photo of the capsule's creator. I nailed it on this one with the inclusion of my school photo from second grade. If an awkwardly posed seven year-old nerd clutching a set of binoculars while rocking a terrible set of bangs, a turtleneck, and a yellow vest doesn’t say “late-90s style,” I don’t know what does.

4. I find it charming that I included library check-out slips in my time capsule, though I would have preferred to see which books I was reading at the time. If I had to guess, I’d assume that I was indulging in a few longer chapter books while simultaneously zipping my way through the entire Junie B. Jones series for the fifth time. By the way, this series was one of my earliest indications that it was acceptable and even COOL to be a curious, slightly odd girl with a penchant for silliness. Thanks, Junie B. Jones. Is this what they call a full-circle moment?

5. AN ACTUAL GIGA PET.

In all honesty, I have no memory of ever playing with this before it met its final resting place in my time capsule. I can’t help but wonder how much I could get for this bad boy on eBay nowadays. Come to think of it, I still have a stash of Beanie Babies hidden away somewhere. Weren’t we supposed to save those so we could cash in on them 20 years down the road?

I always knew I’d find a creative way to pay off my student loans.

6. I mean, come on. Did you really think I’d create a time capsule without including a photo of Mary-Kate and Ashley, my two true pre-teen queens? Fun little story: back in June of this year, my therapist asked if I would be free for an appointment on June 13th. I hesitated, absolutely sure that there was something important happening on that date. The thought of “June 13th” triggered a sense of heightened relevance, like I was forgetting a monumental occasion and couldn’t possibly schedule something as menial as a therapy appointment for that day. As I walked to my car, it hit me: June 13th is Mary-Kate and Ashley’s birthday. My brain paved a spot for that information during the height of my Olsen Twin obsession and never quite unpaved itself.

Anyway, here’s a big shoutout to my childhood heroes, both of whom are now 32 year-old chainsmokers whose perma-pouts make it look as if they’re constantly sucking on Warheads. Hey, why didn’t I include a Warhead in this time capsule?!

7. Only a child who grew up in Holland, Michigan would have a mini Barbie dressed fully in traditional Dutch garb, wooden shoes and all. I had forgotten this existed until today, but it does. It really does. The real question is whether it SHOULD exist. 

8. I wasn’t sure what I’d find on these two sheets of notebook paper, but they contain some sort of exceptionally long-winded list of “rules for life” that I crafted as an eight year-old. I didn’t read the whole thing (eight year-old Sophie was THOROUGH), but here are a few highlights:

• #70: Always scream when you feel like it.

• #71: If your favorite thing to do on the weekends is sing about pioneers, WELCOME TO THE 21ST CENTURY, STINKEY!

• #72: If you want to be popular, write the word “popular” on a piece of paper and tape it to your back.

The wisdom. It’s almost TOO profound.

9. Pokemon cards. An apt choice on my part, if I do say so myself.

10. A handful of glow-in-the-dark stars that likely fell from the ceiling and walls of my childhood bedroom. Like many of the items I received in exchange for my hard-earned tickets at Craig’s Cruisers, I always imagined that these would be much more whimsical than they actually were. I vividly remember the excitement I felt when I came home with an entire pack of these little guys, convinced that my room would soon be transformed into some sort of cosmic wonderland.

If I just stuck these to the ceiling, I would be gifted with new insights from the gods! My unfortunate haircut would grow out overnight! My parents would let me pick up a few extra items at the Scholastic Book Fair! My brother would never speak to me again! The stars would align in my favor, LITERALLY!

Tragically, my experience with these glow-in-the-dark stars went more like this: I adhered the stars to my ceiling. They were mildly amusing, albeit relatively dim, for a few hours. I fell asleep. I was bored by the stars within a week. One by one, the stars fell onto my face in the night and startled me awake. I became convinced that E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, my most feared nemesis, was controlling the stars from above and deliberately scaring me. I began to resent the stars. I filed for divorce from the stars and moved out-of-state. The stars kept leaving me harassing messages on the answering machine. The stars wanted 50/50 custody of the kids. I had to take the stars to court. 

I put the stars in a box and decided I’d never look at them again. Sorry, eight year-old me. The stars are back and they are dimmer than ever.

The rest of the time capsule contained some odds and ends, including a few broken crayons, a penny from 1986, a tiny hair bow that I’m sure I never wore, and some newspaper clippings about the repeated losses of the Detroit Lions (not much has changed there). The Holland Sentinel’s dedication to hard-hitting news coverage was clearly alive and well back in 2000, just as it is today.

All of this time capsule exploration has me wondering about what I might put into a 2018 time capsule. It would be impossible not to mention the mop-headed idiot who somehow occupies the highest office in the land, of course. I’d want to counter his (and his hair's) presence with a few locks of my sweet cat’s fur - and a note explaining that she doesn’t attack my bare legs like Saber used to, but I love them both the same. I’d put in a list of my grievances against Instagram culture and a photo of my family, big brother and all.

Maybe I’d include a few plane tickets from my travels throughout the years or movie stubs from the many films my boyfriend and I have seen together. Even the bad ones. I’d fill my capsule with remnants of the way it feels to be me right now, to be a 26 year-old woman who sometimes still feels eight, who finally recognizes that there’s no such thing as a “real adult.”

That we’re all just bigger versions of our tiny selves with a few more bruises.

A few more losses.

A little less time.

Extra entries on our list of rules for life.

Fewer plastic stars to toss into our time capsules.