My guitar…my Giants jersey…my favorite childhood book I can still read over and over, “The Ramsey Scallop,” my ipod, my favorite pair of earrings…my photo albums of Europe and Central America. My Bible. My cowboy boots. A box of my favorite kind of tea. “Jane Eyre.” Xfiles and Dr. Quinn DVDs. Sweatpants….copies of the blog…seeds for planting sweet peas…a Pez dispenser. Oh and a bag of Cheetos and a Diet Pepsi.

This list still requires some thought.

Last night J made L and I watch an episode of “Parks and Rec,” which I hadn’t seen before, but I love Amy Poehler, so I knew it was going to be funny. They were trying to make a time capsule of all things great about their podunk town. The town fought over what to put it (Twilight books, ashes of their favorite cat, paintings of their dog, etc). And in the end, they ended up only putting in a DVD of the meeting in which they all argued over what to put in the time capsule. Classic.

If you were going to sum up the contents of your life, or at least the best of the contents of your life, in physical form to leave for future generations to find and wonder about the mystery of the past that was you, what would that look like? What material things really define who we are?

I think my list says “Rachel  Danger” pretty well. Future people could open it, add some water, shake it up a bit, put an umbrella in it, salt the rim, tell a kids’ joke, and you would have me! Maybe throw in a junior higher chanting Latin case endings, or a volleyball, or if we’re going to be honest, a bottle of cheap wine or a six pack of some seasonal summer brew and a beach towel, and you basically have a recipe for my life.

I would make one of these tonight and bury it in my backyard in the name of science and the future and the benefit of generations…but I’m not ready to part with these things quite yet.

And my soil is just impossible. Maybe next year.