What i learned over thanksgiving break is that if you ever want to start a blog, the first thing you should do is go find your childhood bedroom and begin to gut it. I can honestly say that given the free time and perhaps a double dog dare, i could write a whole separate blog just about what i found. But, I do not have said time, so I will have to condense all this deliciousness into my current blog.

In order to set the scene, i will tell you that my cousin Ezra, a junior at Michigan (age 20) was at thanksgiving this year (with his sis and dad), and as a present i gave him HIS BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT from the local paper. I found said announcement all browned with age and delicate like parchment tacked to my wall under a note a high school crush had written me about potentially dating if she didn't have a boyfriend (i'm sure i had no idea what she was talking about at the time). Shows you my priorities at the time. More on notes later.

I will also say that some of the stuff I found on my wall was alarming. Alarming in that "was i a teenage stalker" kind of way. Below you will find exhibit A.


























Yes, this is a lock of hair. Yes, I am absolutely horrified that this exists. No, I have no idea whose it is. No, it is not mine. Considering that i don't recall being the hair sniffer type, or having spied into anyones bedroom in high school (hell, most of my friend lived out of state) I really have been stumped as to what the hell human (holy shit i fucking hope its human) hair is doing tacked to my wall. And, the more i think about it, the more i realize that even my rationalizations don't make this particular offense much better. I thought maybe it was my deceased grandmothers. Um . . . fucking gross. Matt Zimbler, you have some serious issues. Every potential explanation i have for this ends with me trying to build a time machine to go back and tell young me NOT to tack that crap to my wall. I implore little matt that older matt is going to be super embarrassed and genuinely creeped out years down the road. Is there any good explanation for this? Perhaps that lock of hair contained the cure for cancer? If so, the cure for cancer now resides in a garbage bag. If this hair does belong to some poor girl, i sincerely apologize. I swear im harmless.

Next. To further build a case that i was indeed a teenaged sex offender (this is probably a bad subject to joke about, but im hoping im only insulting myself), you can see below 9 (i found 1 more later) old boutonnieres (that should be a spelling bee word--sheesh) from high school dances along with 5 tickets from said dances.




















This should come as no real surprise considering the bathroom decorations. I will say that the idea was valid, in that dried flowers are still beautiful (unlike old hair). Were all these dances successes. There is no possible way. But i was weaving the basket of my childhood memories with this cork board collection, and formal and semi-formal dances seemed pretty important at the time. Things i learned from said dances were as follows (one for each dried flower):

1. Don't go to a formal with someone when you have a girlfriend who is not your date to said formal.
2. If the pretty popular girl who is way out of your "league" (at the time, ;)) says yes to going with you to a dance, she probably will leave you high and dry as the date nears.
3. If she doesn't leave you prior to the dance, she'll definitely leave you during it.
4. If you feel like the only sober kid at the dance, you probably are.
5. You will have a better time at a dance the more you like your date, as a person. So when in doubt, go with a friend.
6. At the time, when you thought that having your parents chaperon the dance was the worse thing in the world, you were correct.
7. Having a Mickey Mouse cumber-bun will not get you laid.
8. Being a good dancer is a non-resource in high school.
9. When taking the mayor's daughter to the prom (see #1) don't convince the group you are with to bag the fancy dining they'd planned and go to an all you can eat buffet joint . . . cause the Mayor may be eating there that night (this totally happened).
10. And finally, even though one might have gone to the prom with the captain of the cheerleaders and the prom queen (separately), does not mean that you will lose your virginity in high school. Trust me.

This only begins my series on "the crap i found cleaning my room." Stay tuned.

(i love having a bunch of running story lines on my blog, it keeps me in suspense as well)