My Past in Boxes

I have for various reasons been going through old documents and papers that I have stored up in boxes either because I assumed I might need them later, or for reference, or because they bring up fond memories, or because I knew they would have comical value some day. I'm a collector by nature, of course, and when you have had things stolen from you once you tend to hang on to what is left, but I've really been trying hard to get rid of stuff, and to prove that, I can fit my whole past now into about four boxes. That is, personal items without practical value.

The boxes are now old enough to constitute a real treasure chest to me, in that each time I take a peak into them I discover some things I wasn't aware of any more, that I didn't know about or had forgotten, sometimes that turn out to have tremendous value for me, sometimes just enough for a good laugh.

Among my recent findings were:
. My vaccination certificates.
. Photos of my old self.
. School records.
. Letters from people I had forgotten about.
. Drawings by myself.

And among the most surprising things I learned from my findings were:
. Back then I used to have time on my hands to undertake extensive private letter writing, and since the advent of the internet I have hundreds of pages of them.
. Apparently, I've had more boyfriends than I thought (though only one at a time), but I probably had more fun thinking and writing about them than spending time with them.
. I used to make these quite decent drawings with pen or pencil, even if I now find myself completely devoid of artistic skill.
. Apparently, I had seriously been considering doctoral studies in Complex Analysis or Algebraic Geometry.
. A long time ago I had taken a number of classes on really tough subjects I now know nothing about, like arithmetic convolutions, quadratic forms, algebraic extensions, reciprocity, formal languages and grammatical systems, metric spaces and multiple integrals, residual methods, operators and reduced forms, fondamental group and classification of surfaces, ... and done quite well at them, amazingly enough.