Today I was opening a Dove dark chocolate (is there any other kind?!?) egg and was suddenly reminded of when I was a kid- 7, 8, 9 maybe? Ok, probably like 10-14 - and I used to keep candy wrappers. Not all of them, just the foil ones. I would unwrap candy oh-so-carefully and then press the foil flat in a book for a few days, or I would methodically straighten the creases out using my finger nails. And darned it if I scratched a hole in one and the past 10 minutes were wasted. No holey-foil for my crafts. Throw it over, open a new one and start again (it was a good way to claim that I wasn't eating it because I wanted to, I was eating it because I had to). And when I had compiled enough wrappers, I'd find something creative to do with them. Usually it involved gluing them to the inside of a box. Checkerboard patterns, random arrangements, trying to line up the labels on the foil, sometimes only using the shiny silver insides...always something different. The outside would be a generic kid's Ked's box, but open it up and it was like a surprise of shininess. I was so proud of myself- of my creativity, my OCD neatness of every little piece of foil. I think at some point in my life I had a "foil box" for every holiday. Red and green at Christmas. Pink, blue, and green pastels at easter. Random ugly assortments at Halloween. Red, white and pink for Valentine's Day.
I was lame.
What the hell was I supposed to do with these things? I couldn't put anything in the boxes, because anything I put in them would scratch the foil. I would put the box tops on my shelves in my room, but eventually they'd just collect dust and I'd be disappointed and they'd get tossed. Or replaced with new ones. Eventually I grew out of this (my younger sister pointed out how lame I was). But it was fond memory that I just recalled. One of those memories that brings you back to childhood. When everything was easy and you didn't have a care in the world.
