“The irony is that for years the collection was just left in cardboard boxes. It’s only when they rather conscientiously dusted it off and launched this rather impressive exhibition that the whole issue has resurfaced again.”

I spent another afternoon in the garage today, cleaning and straightening and trying to tell myself that it wasn’t in vain, that I wasn’t wasting my time. I’ve lately become very interested in time. In another day or two, I figure, I’ll do something about it.

That’s the afternoon scene in the living room, above. We live in and around cardboard just now, and will for another week or so. On the one hand I’m glad we’ve started the packing process so early. Things have a tendency to creep up on you. Something happens that slows you down. It is good to be prepared. On the other hand, I’ll be sick of seeing cardboard by the time the big day rolls around.

Anyway. In the garage I’ve found a few interesting things. I have  one more box of old paperwork to go through, hopefully it can all be shredded, burned by a blast furnace and then reduced to its chemical components by an exciting new enzymatic process I discovered on late night television. Before that happens, though, I must go through every scrap of paper to determine the likelihood of needing a power bill from 2001. (Not likely.)

But still, you never know what exciting information might be in that bill. Some future generation might gawk in awe and wonder at power consumption rates from the turn of the century. “And grok that wacky font, space cowboy!” Because this is how future generations will talk about the things that have been resting in my storage system for all those years.

But then you think about the things they won’t understand, or, worse, even care about.  I found a paper from one of the classes from my master’s degree. It was titled “Campaign Homophily: Earning a Voter’s Perception of Similarity.” I just Googled an old paper I wrote, the height of vanity. Happily no one else has yet to use that eye-catching, page-turning title.

I don’t remember much about writing that particular paper — it has been about five years, or a lifetime, whichever comes first. I also discovered a little slip of paper from elementary school, this one I vaguely recall. It was a day when football players from Alabama visited our school to talk about studying hard, saying no to drugs and making good grades. I got all of their autographs.

As football players go it was a good group, Derrick Thomas and Keith McCants were the biggest stars, a murder’s row of defenders no one wanted to face. Thomas became a terror in the NFL, of course, died far too young and was posthumously inducted into the football Hall of Fame last year. McCants’ presence is now painfully ironic. He’s been arrested on five drug-related charges in the last two years. Another guy, Trent Patterson, is working as an athletic trainer near his home in Syracuse and was featured on The Biggest Loser two years ago. Two of the other signatures are from common names, so Google only lets us guess where they are today.

I’ve never given away a Hall of Famer’s autograph before, but an acquaintance claimed it for scrapbooking purposes, so I’ll stick it in an envelope and send a 20-year-old scrap of paper to someone who will glue it into a book. And then, someone in her family will stumble across it in 40 years and wonder why it has been in a cardboard box all this long.

The circle of life continues. I should continue more of it to donations or the garbage, but you just never know.

That quote? It is from British explorer Hugh Thomson, discussing early-20th-century Yale expeditions to Machu Picchu. Do you know how few worthwhile quotes on cardboard there are?