I'm spending part of my weekend doing some much overdue cleaning out of my basement. It's quite amazing the amount of CRAP one person can collect over the course of time. Just to give you an idea of how long it's been since I've gone back into that corner of the basement, I found the wristband that my mother wore when she went to the hospital to give birth to me. Yeah. Get the picture?

It's a painfully arduous task, sifting through all this stuff. But, I have come across some cool stuff, too. Stuff that I've forgotten all about and hadn't thought of for at least ten years. Most of it was the usual stuff: photographs, old toys, my old magic stuff (I loved playing magician), things of that nature. Two things kind of stood out to me however. In an old, dusty box I found two nearly crumbled up sets of papers. One is the final issue of my high school newspaper. The other is a paper I wrote for my senior year World Literature class.

It was reading through the school paper, and it also made me remember just how much I kept to myself. You won't find me in there very much. Somehow, someone did get me to submit a "Senior Will", but that's about it. There was one thing that made me laugh, in the "In Ten Years..." section. "In ten years Steve Morris will be the 9 time reigning national horseshoe champion." Close. It was six years.

The paper I wrote was a reinterpretation of Dante's Inferno for Mrs. Nicely. It was fun reading that thing again. Mrs. Nicely's summary she wrote on the front still makes me laugh:

"Steve, your cartoon inferno showcases your creative talents. By focusing on one area - cartoons - you have provided continuity. The punishments fit the crimes. However, your Satan level is too crude."

Me? Too crude? NEVER!