Childhood Box of Curiosities on Flickr
Recently my parents brought me something from my early years which I hadn’t seen in a long while — a metal handled box with the Berenstain Bears printed on top. The box itself is pretty unassuming, but what was collected inside the box was part of something that occupied a good chunk of my leisure time in the ’80s.
As a kid, I was a collector. Tiny things fascinated me. An elementary school carnival would be a delight, because I could go there the morning after and pick up all the miniature plastic toys that people dropped on the ground. One time, the family went up north to visit a plot of high desert land which my parents owned for a time. Part of the land was littered with hundreds of broken fragments of old china dinnerware from the 1800s, which I excitedly collected and kept. My two brothers sneered at me (they sneered at most everything I did), but it was their loss that they couldn’t see the beauty in these amazing little fragments from the past. A few years later, I incorporated many of the pieces into a cool art piece.
After accumulate these objects, they often got randomly put away in bags or boxes. This particular box is an example of stuff acquired in my young teen years. There are some objects that are definitely of their time — Smurfs, a Yoda sticker, a mini Rubiks Cube. Other, much older objects were taken from my grandmother’s estate after she died in the early ’80s (guess grandma was a packrat like me). I took photos of everything in this box of curiosities and assembled them once again in Flickr — enjoy!
August 15th, 2008 at 9:23 am
wow, this is so cool matt! it makes me want to reach out and touch all these little things. very very cool.
August 15th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Thanks, William. The photos aren’t as good as yours, but hey I tried!
September 18th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
Awesome collection; I can practically hear the rattling inside the tin lunchbox.
September 19th, 2008 at 11:50 am
this is great! Ha!I remember those spider rings.