There’s a lot of random stuff on the walls of my room. If you’re interested in the stories behind some of it, take a gander at this page and the poetic summary found at 25-10-9 - Windows to the Past
The Junior Ranger Sticker
About the junior ranger sticker in a plastic bag: When I was in marching band, the band did a car wash fundraiser every year to raise money, and I volunteered to help my senior year. There were too many people for everyone to be fully helpful, and I didn’t really know what I was doing, but we had a ton of fun. On a break, I stopped by one of the parking lot medians to get a snack or chat and looked down and saw a junior ranger sticker just sitting there in the dirt. I’m not sure why it was there, or why it caught my fancy, but I proceeded to wear it proudly for the rest of the day.
Now, car washes were never a great place for a sticker to be in, and I wasn’t the most careful, so at some point along the way, after showing all of my friends my brand-new top-of-the-line sticker, I lost it.
I was very sad.
After I left my shift and went home, I got a text from a friend: she had found the sticker and saved it in a plastic bag. A few days later, she gave it to me and I’ve kept it in that bag to this day.
The Whole Italian Restaurant
There’s a post it note on my wall that says:
“‘We will throw the entire italian restaurant at the wall and see what sticks’ - 3/21/23.”
I can’t remember who wrote it, but it was one of the Heritage interns that were in my bullpen when I was there in Spring 2023. We covered those walls with quotes and other memorabilia from our time there, and I saved several notes when the term ended. That particular one was from a conversation when we were brainstorming ideas on how we were going to complete some assignment or other that we were grossly underqualified for. It’s a play on “throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks.”
We had a great bullpen, but we weren’t the smartest. We thought to ourselves: “man our walls are really funny; we should leave everything up there so that whoever takes it down can laugh at it.” When I visited the next week, I learned that the walls were still up and reconsidered that position, clearing out everything on my wall into the trash bin. I probably should have done the rest of the room, but I feel like I was in a hurry. I would say hindsight is 20/20, but given the haziness of my memory, that would be an overstatement.