Memory Lane is paved with PVC and candle wax.

It all started because I wanted to retrieve my flute from my parents’ basement.

Every Christmas I start to feel nostalgic about nearly becoming a professional flautist once upon a time. I think about how much the music was a part of me, and how good it would feel to let my fingers fly across the keys again. I dig my flute out of whatever box it’s hiding in and play Christmas carols with my mother at the piano. Inevitably, my sister makes a comment akin to, “Is it supposed to sound that way, or is one of you out of tune?” and my mother says the piano tuner was just here last week, and everybody looks at me. Then I take my flute and practice in private, where I realize that my fingers don’t fly so much as hop around hoping for a brisk wind, and I start to feel almost as inadequate as I felt in grade school that time I was left without a partner in square-dancing class and had to do-si-do with my six-foot-four gym teacher. Soon, I resign myself to the fact that I’m not a brilliant musician anymore, and I pack the instrument back up in a box in the basement and go off to find a chocolate bar and a stiff eggnog.

Well, Christmastime is here again, and I’m getting a yen to play O, Holy Night in D minor. This weekend I went to my parents’ house with the intention to find my flute. My mother informs me that all of my “crap” has been packed into neatly labeled boxes and I am strictly forbidden from opening them unless I intend to pack them back up again. So, handing me a roll of packing tape and some bubble wrap, she sends me to the basement.

When I moved into my own place three years ago, I only brought with me what I felt represented me as a mature, independent adult. (Well, except for my talking Steve Irwin doll. “Crikey!”) Basically I brought a computer and a can of Pledge. But there were a few things from my childhood that I didn’t have the heart to throw out, so I put them all in cardboard boxes to throw out later in a fit of regret and depression. I kind of forgot about all that stuff, and when I started to open boxes and dig through the reminders of my prepubescent life, it was like glimpsing another lifetime.

Here are some of the thoughts that ran through my head as I unearthed treasures of decades past:

Awww…all my favorite stuffed animals! Here’s the Knight’s Horse I won at Excalibur in Las Vegas playing that game where you have to weave the little circular wand around the spinning metal swirly-gig without touching it. I totally ruled at that game. I knew I should have become a carnie.

Wow, I didn’t realize I had this many horse show ribbons. These might be more impressive if they weren’t all last place. Reserve Champion really looks snazzy when you don’t know there were only two people in the class.

One person should not have this many cat statuettes. This is not healthy. This is manic. This is only slightly less manic than the meticulous way my mother wrapped each statuette in paper using a stunningly structured packaging system.

Check it out! “Melissa’s Box of Tapes.” All my favorite music circa ‘89 B.C. (before CDs) in a shoebox covered with colored construction paper and several stickers of music notes and kittens. Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation and Paul Abdul’s Spellbound nestled lovingly alongside every Disney soundtrack ever produced between 1988 and 1994. Oh, and here’s my tape of scary Halloween Sounds I bought for the marginally successful Halloween party I threw in junior high that involved lots of streamers and an appalling amount of peeled grapes. Good times. Oh, and my Tiffany tape. Okaaaay, let’s just put that back and pretend we didn’t see it.

Why does this box smell like I just walked into the experimental research department at the Institute of Aromatherapy? Ah. Candles. And about twenty broken sticks of incense. Apparently, I had an undiagnosed olfactory disorder as a child.

What is this? It looks like a gallon-sized Ziploc bag filled with…colored plastic? Oh, it’s my creepy collection of lanyards. Because an uncanny knowledge of 53 different ways to weave together five strings of fettuccini-like PVC plastic was a requirement of adolescence in the early 90s. Somebody had to make your grandparents’ gimp keychains.

That is a truly horrific candle. I think it has eyes.

Oh, dude! This was totally my favorite stuffed gecko wearing a hula skirt with a suction cup on its belly EVER!

Huh. Every greeting card I ever got. Why did I keep all of these? Oh, I remember. It’s because I need tangible verification that people like me.

Wow. I had a lot of candles. Why weren’t my parents worried about pyromania?

Oh. My. God. Check out my Casio PT-100 battery-operated tekkno-percussive 32-key polyphonic keyboard. This little beauty was the shining glory of 1987. Nobody, but nobody, rocked the pipe-organ samba version of Jingle Bells like I did. This baby probably set my parents back a good $35. It’s really too bad those piano lessons didn’t take. Last time I played a piano duet with my mother, we had all the combined talent of an ADD six-year-old with one hand and a hearing impediment.

Holy cow. I forgot I had so many dangly earrings. (Everybody always knew when I had picked up a new hobby or developed a new interest, because I would inevitably show up with a pair of earrings to illustrate it in a new and creative way. I had flutes that hung down to my shoulders, and giant koala bears that looked as though they were clinging to my neck like so much eucalyptus.) I’m a little surprised the holes in my ears aren’t stretched to size of coasters like those people I’ve seen in National Geographic. Small favors, I guess.

Finally! There’s my flute! Thank god, because this stuff is really starting to make me wonder how I had any friends as a kid. I was a freak. I think it’s time to go mangle some carols. Where's my eggnog?