WARNING! WARNING! It's another strange post that tells you about what goes through my warped brain. And it starts with a little back story that goes a little something like this...
For many years, a rather wealthy widow (who I'll call Nana) lived in a large home on an even larger piece of property in Brookdale, a small town in the Santa Cruz mountains. During the war, Nana was one of the many people around the country who answered a request from the USO to open their homes to soldiers returning from the war who had to layover in various places including the Bay Area.. The 70+ soldiers who passed through Nana’s home from August 1944 through November 1945 left a little bit of themselves in Brookdale by jotting down a short note of appreciation, and in most cases, a home address in a plain bound daytimer. In the case of two of those soldiers, they each left a photograph paperclipped in the daytimer.
Sixty-four years later, in January of this year, that same daytimer was found by me and my loving, adopted second mother (we'll call her Beezy) as we sorted through the personal effects of her 97 year old father who had passed away (RIP Kenny, the world was a brighter place with you in it). Beezy and I thought it was one of the greatest treasures ever found since she lived through the war, and I've always been fascinated with it. Together we decided that we should try to track down as many of the names in the daytimer and send them a copy of their entry (no, we haven't quite figured out what the accompanying letter is going to say - we haven't gotten that far).
Here's where the sappy sentimental part takes a turn for the weird...
About a month ago I was copying the daytimer pages and I realized that the two small, partly rusted metal paperclips would eventually leave rust marks both on the photos and the pages. I replaced them with plastic clips. Just as I was about to toss the them in the garbage can, I thought "holy smokes! These paperclips are at least 67 years old!". Expanding on this weird realization, I thought that it was totally cool that I actually knew the age of these two paperclips!
If you think about it, it's not impossible to know the age of a single paperclip that you’re holding in your hand. But you have to admit that it’s not likely that you know its age. As far as dating a paperclip, it can’t be more than 108 years old since that little marvel we know modernly as a paperclip only invented in 1899 by the Norwegian inventor, John Vaaler. His invention was first patented in 1899 in Germany and Vaaler received the American patent in 1901. So anyone can at least argue that a particular paperclip is less than 108 years old.
On the flip side, you are likely to be able to look at the package of clips sitting in your desk drawer that you personally bought new and state with certainty that you know roughly how old it is. If you bought the package 1 year, 4 years, or however many years ago, you can be reasonably certain that every paperclip in that package is as old as however many years ago you bought it.
I also have no doubt around the country and the world even there are various museums that may, for example, have papers being held together with a paperclip that were drafted by Theodore Roosevelt in 1910. Yes, in that case you would likely be able to state that the paperclip is at least 99 years old. But that’s in a museum, and this story derives from some unspectacular event in the normal course of living our lives.
The bottom line is that in the here and now, I can say with a high degree of certainty that these two insignificant paperclips are almost seven decades old. How cool is that?!
Now, I wish this were leading into some great social commentary about society's descent into a self-absorbed disposable society where material goods are often discarded not because they are no longer useful but simply because they are old. But no, that’s not the point.
Nor is this story leading to a reflection on the war itself and the amazing soldiers who fought for freedom against one egomaniacal nutjob and his dreams of tyranny and oppression. But nope, that’s also not the point.
Nor is this a commentary on how this daytimer and its contents came to exist during a vastly different time with different people and my own cynical belief that, if asked by the USO to extend the same offer to soldiers returning home from war, American citizens would not extend the same kindnesses to unknown soldiers fighting for our country. And no, that’s still not the point.
(Okay, well maybe there was a little social commentary in there)
While this post is truly just about two small paperclips that gave me pause and made me smile (and of course gave me a strange blog subject), maybe the point was to just to give you a wacky story that made you think ‘huh, weird.’ Or maybe at the end of all of this you're only question is what happened to those two paperclips? Don’t worry because I just couldn’t bring myself to throw them out. They’re sitting safely in that section of my jewelry box where I’ve thrown various odds and ends like single earrings, backings from long since gone earrings, screws, and the occasional odd button from a shirt I probably don't have anymore. And in 50 years if you stumble across two small, slightly (or possibly completely) rusted paperclips while sorting through my lifetime of crap, I hope you remember this little story and just pause to think about where those paperclips came from and that they meant a little something to me. At the very least, I hope you smile with the realization that by those two paperclips are now more than 117 years old.
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