Oct 11 2024 60 mins
Does a 1967 elementary school magazine -- or a fifth grade school play -- still have value? Only if you’re looking for lost memories, new insights, and hilarity
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Somewhere in your home, you might have saved at least one treasure from elementary school. The question is: Why did you save it? The only way to find out: Hunt for your ancient objects and see what revelations they bring to your adult life.
At least that’s what Sally and I decided to do.
After I found a play and three copies of a school magazine that I had saved since fifth grade, we used the Interwebs to track down five other people who created those masterpieces with us. Then we made them revive their original roles in the play and read poems, jokes, and gossip from the magazine, all written when we were 10. They also shared some of their own elementary school treasures, before we determined the fate of everything we’d saved.
It might seem absurd for seven adults to go back to their fifth grade writings. Which is why partly why we did it. A little absurdity is a lot of fun. But here’s the surprise: we also had revelations about our lives, thoughts that would never have come to us if we left those objects unseen in the attic, waiting for someone to toss them.
Oh, and yes, I also saved my fifth grade class photo -- along with a photo of my classmate Nancy (Simms) Sofen, who joins us on this episode.
We hope our fifth grade gang will inspire you to start searching for your own elementary school friends. Then stage your version of our kooky reunion, where you just might get useful insights into who you were as children and how it affected you for the rest of your life.
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More info, photos, and transcript: throwitoutpodcast.com
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