Accidental Time Capsules

We’ve all heard of a time capsule. You build it. Find a sturdy box. Fill it with childhood memories. Bury it. Dig it up twenty years later. But that’s not really how this works anymore.

Our time capsules are different. Accidental. One is small, white and silver with a grey dial and a white button in the center. Cracked screen from one of the many times it’s been dropped. It hasn’t been updated in years, but that’s how I like it. I like plugging it in, waiting ten minutes for it to charge, and reliving the moments buried deep in my memory, that only these chords, those lyrics, can pull to the surface. The song he sent me to hint to me that he liked me. The song he sent on his early morning drive to work that he said made him think of me. That song he sent me to hint that it was over. The songs that nearly drowned me in my sorrow, and those that accompanied my bliss.

The summer of the same three albums I listened to over and over as I first dove into writing. The songs of the summer of my daily thirty-minute commute to summer school. The song that played during my first dance at my junior year Winter Ball. And the album I played on repeat as my grandfather lay on his deathbed.

These time capsules are different. Unintentional. Searching my app for a picture to share, but getting lost in the years of catalogued images crammed in there to digital capacity. The accidental screenshots and intentional ones of memes I wanted to remember, but never revisited. The snapshots of moments while traveling, trying to commit the moment to a less faulty memory than my own. Near-endless scrolling through landscapes that I was sure I’d need, but just look like blurred tree lines and rolling hills. Images of people I’d long lost touch with, but those moments were gold. The concerts with repeating images in poor lighting. Recordings coupled with pictures, all of extremely poor quality, of the first drag show I ever went to (and all the ones after that).

These time capsules are different. Messy. A cardboard box of “junk” shoved under the bed or in a dark corner of a closet, left to be forgotten until I can get around to it. Momentos from my travels. Ticket stubs from the French Metro, the print barely visible. Maps and brochures of the monuments and attractions we visited. Pressed flowers from who-knows-what plant from who-knows-where that I thought would be cool to scrapbook. Admissions tickets with fading dates that remind me of the adventures we had. Of the adventures we crave.

We all have accidental time capsules in unexpected places, waiting to surprise us with the memories we thought we had forgotten.