Lost and found

Though, if you eventually become unaware of something’s very existence—like the things listed below—is it really ever “lost”? Anyway. This morning I went through the file drawer of my desk here in my old room, and decided to throw out a few things. It ended up being a lot of things—oh, so many ATM receipts and various incarnations of my resumé; maybe I should create some kind of collage—but some of the more interesting and obscure keepers are:

• boarding passes for the now-defunct Reno Air, from the trip Sandro and I took to Hollywood in 1999, for me to try out for Win Ben Stein’s Money. Remember that show on Comedy Central? Is it even still on the air? No, I didn’t make it on the show. Nor did I get to meet Ben Stein or Jimmy Kimmel.
• various Disneyland employment brochures, from when I applied for a college summer position at the park, which I didn’t end up taking. These include an employee policy manual, and one called “The Disney Look”: “As a Cast Member of Disneyland Resort, you are an important part of the Disneyland show… The following guidelines have been developed for consistency and to maintain the integrity and quality of The Disney Look.” It then goes into almost comically exhaustive detail on everything from hairstyle to wardrobe to jewelry.
• a yellowing copy of the San Francisco Chronicle from Thursday, Oct. 19, 1989, two days after the massive 7.0 earthquake.
• a few brochures for years-old audio-video technology. The Sony Mavica? In case you’re wondering, it started out circa the late 1980s as a digital camera that used proprietary two-inch floppy disks, but whose main intended display output was TV; computers didn’t even figure into the setup.
• two porn magazines I bought when I giddily turned 18.
• written in my handwriting on a torn corner of a sheet of paper, a mailing address for Stephen Sondheim, and next to it, the name of a teacher from my high school. I have no idea how I came into posession of this or what the personal connection is.