Opening my @Crayola year-2000 time capsule. 🧵

Opening my @Crayola year-2000 time capsule. 🧵

Context: Amid the millennium craze of late 1999, @Crayola_Capital offered a simple time capsule. My brother and I both made one on the verge of the new year. I originally had the idea of burying it somewhere, but for whatever reason that never happened.

Instead, I ended up carrying it with me into adulthood, from one place to another. Many times I've thought about just throwing it out or cracking it open, but I never did. Until now, 25 years later.

So what's inside? Let's find out.

The first thing I pulled out was this AIDS flier. The sticker on it reminds me of something I had forgotten: the time capsule kit came with stickers prompting you to include different kinds of things. Here are some pamphlets from the late '90s.

Abstinence pamphlet.

HIV, alcohol, and drugs.

The personal information book! I guess I didn't fill the whole thing out.

Some other items. Photos of my family members REDACTED.

Pokémon advertisement, Windows key from a keyboard, and Living Faith devotional booklet.

Coin, envelope, and impression of a miraculous medal.

Looks like a button from when my mom ran for school board, something about allergies, and some pogs.

This is what an Icee cost at Walmart, apparently. Also a note that I wrote to you, the people of the future. Bonus: TI calculator info.

Stickers on the inside of the container.

Apparently I recorded a message and some music? I'll also have to try to find some way to access these disks, if they still work.

Follow-up: Some of the negative comments are cracking me up. 😆 No offense taken. I was a kid. I didn't have any money, and I grew up in a small town. This is apparently what I had to put in the capsule. It's all real. Family was actually not very religious back then. Much more so now. I had just started to get interested in Christianity over the course of the previous year or so. The devotional stuff is a reflection of that. Yes, I am a priest today. My handwriting has not improved in the slightest. Why did I include the AIDS pamphlet? And the others? Honestly I'm not sure. I didn't remember including them. It's possible that they were just free materials that could fit in the capsule. AIDS was also something that we heard about all the time. So I probably thought of it as a timely thing. I'm glad so many of you enjoyed this! If I can find a way to play the tape and see what's on the disks, I will do an update.

Follow-up: 2: I realize that in the second post I tagged the wrong @Crayola. Oops.

Follow-up 3: For people who are assuming the pamphlets come from an ultra-religious upbringing, I can understand why you might think that. But the reality is they came from going to public school during the '90s.

Follow-up 4: I was able to play the tape. It starts with reading from a Calvin and Hobbes strip, continues with references to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a poem (?) by me (?), musings on the future, and then into a song by Alanis Morissette. 😬 tinyurl.com/2wydjjpf

Follow-up 5: Thanks, everyone for congratulating me on being a priest. It's a great gift from God--not always fun or easy, but always important. Here are some highlights (3 parts, sorry about the images of text):

Follow-up 6: I was able to recover the contents of one of the disks! This is the "me and my family" disk. I cannot get the "English I" disk to work. There are .wps files on the disk. (note: there was also personal information about family members that I am not posting here)