The bottom drawer of my dresser is full—overflowing—with old school assignments, doodles, and the miscellaneous. There’s a Scooby-Doo tin filled to capacity with old crayons, a forgotten stamp collection, smiley-faced spelling tests, laughably simple five-paragraph essays, and the occasional amateuresque cartoonish drawing.
By some mix of curiosity, nostalgia, and procrastination, I was digging through the Old Stuff drawer today and stumbled across three gems.
The first was this. And the title says it all. The spelling errors are precious, innocent. The illustration is spot-on, carefully and accurately depicting the scene down to the nightmarish backdrop and the half-sit-half-stand configuration of my formerly contortion-enabled body. The 90-degree smile is a nice touch. So is the Arthur-inspired fashion sense. And why write with the tip of a pencil when you can write with the eraser?
I don’t know what I’m gaining out of making fun of my kid-self, actually.
Katrina moved after 3rd? maybe 4th grade and I haven’t seen or caught up with her since.
This second gem is another great sample of my once-brilliant writing and drawing ability. My only friends were my neighbors and I was perfectly content with that, as evidenced by my super obvious smile. The proportions are delightfully off. And rest assured, “Braiton” (actually spelled Brayton) had arms.
I remember daily summer pool parties at Mark’s, raking together leaf piles in my Octoberized backyard with Brayton, making up nonsense words with Katrina. It was the best of times, it was the best of times.
And clearly, my sister wasn’t important to me.
Here’s the last one and then I’ll let you go.
Actually, it’s ironic that I said “let you go” because that’s exactly how I “lost” Blaze: I deliberately freed him from the cage. Outside.
I remember watching him fly off, feeling proud of myself for “doing the right thing,” granting him freedom in the middle of some summer. And based on that logic, I don’t know why I didn’t release Melly too (he’s buried in our backyard now).
But anyway, that was that; I released one of my pet birds. Partly on a whim, partly because I thought he would have a better life in the wild, and partly because I was just a little naïve. Just a little.
I might dig up some more stuff from the drawer later on. This was fun.
Ishmam Ahmed 
