History on record

When you were 12, did you wonder what your life was going to be like in another 20 years? Did you think about the kind of person you’d become and whether or not you’d still like the things you loved in those pre-teen years? I know I did. I remember hoping I’d be a famous author with good hair, and I just assumed I’d still be as obsessed with Bon Jovi as I was then. (I figured that the older I got, the less weird it would be that I liked a band of middle-aged men. Ahem.) When my cousin and I were little, we wrote tons of notes, drew pictures, and saved mementos for a “time capsule” we wanted to put in the ground. I remember working pretty hard on that thing, but we never did bury it.

This guy, however, really planned ahead as a 12-year-old. In 1992, he recorded a one-sided conversation intended for viewing by his future self. He seems pretty confident that his future self would talk back, so he just kinda rolls with it. And he was right: at 32, he finally responds. The results… are hilarious:

Is that freakin’ genius or what?

Seeing as I have a 12-year-old (and 10-year-old) sister myself, I’m totally intrigued by the idea of documenting their current dramatic pre-teeny lives so they can laugh and cringe at it later. Of course, YouTube makes that much easier, though it takes away the joy of having an actual artifact to represent an otherwise forgotten memory. My sisters obviously love it, though, and they might’ve forced me to upload a couple of videos online. This, however, was my doing:

I’m so glad this is on the Internet to be watched. Over. And over. And over.