The Capsule Cometh

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 19:38:00 -0400
personal-stories

For nearly thirty years they sat untouched in the attic of my parents' house in California: a collection of sealed cardboard boxes held together with masking tape. Hidden inside were the materials a 12-year old boy had decided to send forward through time.

This was the second of my time capsules, sealed on July 12, 1980. I remember nothing about the contents other than that in the months after I sealed my first capsule (on March 5, 1980, to be opened on March 5, 2000), I had given more thought to what a person from the distant future might find interesting. And I had decided to be more ambitious and patient than I had been with the first capsule: instead of a 20-year wait, I left instructions (taped to the cover of one of the boxes) that this capsule should be opened 30 years hence, on July 12, 2010. I know I hoped that I would be the one to open the capsule, but it was a real challenge to imagine that I might one day be so old, or that the capsule would not be lost at some point on its temporal journey.

A few weeks ago I asked my parents to send me the capsule. My mother put the whole thing in one big box, and took it to a FedEx office today. 26 pounds of my distant past are on their way to Baltimore, in plenty of time for the July unveiling.

So what do I hope to find? I can think of some things that I might have gotten my hands on as a 12-year old that would have appreciated significantly in value over 30 years. But (unrealistic as it is to expect) I think I'd like nothing more than to find 26 pounds of handwritten pages--messages from family and friends, and my own impressions of my life and speculation about the years ahead.