My First Stamp Collector’s Album, Circa 1969
When I was a kid, my world was an adventure, time spent commanding my GI Joes on the battlefields in our backyard, listening to the sound of baseball cards flapping in the spokes of my bike, and watching Hot Wheels screaming down orange track — this was the definition of cool when you’re eight years old. Time passed. And then, as those important childhood things tend to do, they drifted off, blown away to who knows where. Gone. Poof. Lost to time, garage sales, or tossed into the mysterious black hole that was the garbage can.
But one thing, one unlikely little survivor,
kept finding its way back to me.
It would vanish for years, then reappear like a shy ghost: tucked in a box, hiding in a drawer, peeking out from a stack of forgotten things. And every time it resurfaced, I’d give it a small nod, a quiet smile, and think of my grandmother — the loving stamp collector who tried to pass her passion on to me. She bought me a few space stamps, hoping I’d catch the bug.
Back then, it didn’t catch on. But the stamp collecting starter album waited anyway. Patiently. Silently. Like it knew something I didn’t.
And now, after all these years, it’s sparked something. A little flicker. A little “hey, remember me?” from the past. Maybe it’s finally time to fill those empty pages. Maybe it’s time to finish the story my grandmother started.
Funny how the smallest relic becomes the loudest memory.
Well… Grandma, I think you’d be proud of me. I’ve started filling all the blank pages.
Love, Lil’ Kenny —
all grown up, but still listening.
Helen Munyon