Once upon a time before text messaging, email, and God forbid facebook; students would make great sport of sneaking messages scrawled on haphazardly ripped pieces of notebook paper to their fellow classmates.  The messages were called “notes”. Constant care was taken to navigate the note through the right channels, e.g. you did NOT want to pass the note to the kid that picked their nose, or the one who was too much of an airhead to be discrete, and definitely not the one who was always kissing the teacher’s ass as discovery and exposure was assured.

Call it nostalgia. Call it me getting old, but damn kids now just don’t know how to have a good time!  We lived and breathed to push information behind enemy lines during that french class while Ms. Whatserface (yep the memory loss is already setting in) would slash out french verbs with violent vigor, silver hair jostling to the rhythm of her wiggling body, only to have her protruding belly render them a smudge of chalk simultaneously. Looking back, most of that covert information was utterly meaningless. It was all about connecting. Getting what you had to say to someone else without anyone else finding out. It was a gratuitous ritual of our time. Which is alas, gone. *sniff, tear*

Being the fantastic semi-pro hoarder I am, I happen to have kept one of these precious relics.  This one was special and one that I have referred to over the years whenever I needed a tiny dose of confidence.  It was written about me by James Blair, a boy who waited on the school bus with me everyday while I was in elementary school. It’s always make me chuckle a little. Here, have a look … but don’t tell anybody, it’s top secret!

Rosie.