Aarushi Kumar

First Place: Nonfiction

“Something to Remember You By” 
by Aarushi Kumar
12th grade, Kinnelon High School

—

I’ve got a nasty habit of leaving things unfinished. Homework assignments, projects, sketches, and especially cleaning my room. Swimming through a sea of clothes strewn on my carpet is getting kind of sad, so I decide to sit down and organize. My dad brings an old shelf to put all my books in. I used to use this back when we lived in our apartment. It still has the same pen marks and doodles from when I was a little kid.

I grab all the stray books and objects sitting around my room and start sifting through everything. This mountain of random junk on my carpet tells me my most prized characteristic: I’m definitely a hoarder. From pins, screws, hair ties, mechanical pencils that have run out of lead, dried-out markers, and broken crayons to notebooks from elementary school: I’ve kept everything.

So, my idea of “spring cleaning” typically consists of putting all my weird useless stuff from one box to another box and then squeezing all the boxes into a tiny corner of my shelf to feel good about myself. The biggest item I still haven’t unpacked yet, even after over a year of being in our new house, is this large moving box full of junk. Books from back in middle school, art supplies, papers, and an impressive collection of water bottles I’ve gotten from goodie bags. Like I said, hoarder.

Most things I look past without a second glance until I find a tin pencil case sitting at the bottom. It’s light when I bring it out, and I can hear the clink of small knickknacks I can easily toss into the trash. I open it to find the most depressing time capsule I’ve ever seen: dried-out glitter glue tubes, a marble, three old clarinet reeds, a hand sanitizer keychain from that stupid “no jingles or mascots” insurance company, a dirty pen, a Lego piece, and a lanyard from summer camp. Though of course, adhering to my hoarder mentalities, I throw away none of it.

My hand moves to close the box and put it into my new shelf until I take a last look at the lanyard. I used to be obsessed with making them back when I went to summer camp at the YMCA. My mom worked late so she always used to pick me up once most kids were gone. While I waited for her, I would sit with a small group of kids and some high school CITs and wait for our parents together. It was in the middle of summer, and it was so hot that all we could do was sit in the shade and talk. The afternoon summer sun colored everything in shades of orange and the grass was always sparse and brown with little specks of green.

Sometimes we would play games to pass the time. But what I remember the most from those late afternoons was sitting on the creaky wooden picnic tables and working on these lanyards. I knew all the different techniques: zippers, boxes, and Chinese staircases. I made bracelets and keychains and necklaces.

The small and sad zipper lanyard in my hands is made with strands of neon yellow, green, and blue. No doubt they were the last colors left in that dirty plastic box. The end of the design even has a permanent bend to it that no matter how many times I push against never seems to get better.

Even as a self-proclaimed hoarder who keeps absolutely everything, somehow all the years of beautiful creations I’d made at summer camp survived by a single ugly zipper. My younger self would be so disappointed.

The last remnants of my childhood had been destroyed before my childhood was even over. That thought sits in my stomach as I stare at this small weave of lanyard in my hand made by a child who no longer exists. Why was I in such a rush to give them up? Did I look at those bracelets and keychains and necklaces like I look at this one now, or did I throw them out without a second glance?

I don’t even remember how to make a zipper anymore.

Or a box.

Or a Chinese staircase.

I stare at the contents of the tin pencil box with new eyes. Dried-out glitter glue tubes I had never used, clarinet reeds for a clarinet I had long gotten rid of, a Lego piece from a set I haven’t looked at in years. And then … this lanyard. This wasn’t a time capsule, but more of a tomb. A box where my younger self and all the things I had once cherished were buried.

It was impossible that back then I had no problems of my own, but looking back, my life was perfect. All I remember from summer camp is happiness. The press of humidity on my arms in the afternoons, the commotion of hundreds of voices during lunch, swimming in the pool, playing games, being a kid with no worries.

Nowadays I don’t even have the energy to get out of bed in the morning. A storm of tests, fears of slipping grades, college applications, and ACT scores brews in my head. I don’t feel the same childlike wonder and curiosity I used to have. I don’t have time for it anymore.

As I sit in a sea of dirty clothes and mementos of the past, I think of my younger self again and all the things I used to love. I walk over to my backpack and tie the plastic strings of the lanyard onto the front pouch. Now it’s no longer a discarded piece of a forgotten childhood. It’s a keychain. Just as that ten-year-old kid intended it to be.