Blast From the Past

There was I time when I was fastidious with record keeping. I've dropped off in recent times although not for lack of want. With that fastidiousness comes a mountain of records that piles up over the years. Being overly sentimental, I've come to attach emotions to them too. Not to the piles of paper, but to what they represent; times in my life that were historically significant to me.


At times, I've valued myself a bit too highly and have wondered if these records would be one day worth some money. However, since I'm not famous or of historical significance on even a local scale, I have come to realise that these records probably aren't even worth the paper they are printed on. Their only worth is to me and since I don't have the resources to carry around a mountain of paper it's time for them to go into the shredder. 


Curiosity overcame me as I fingered through statements from my first mobile phone contract back in 1998. It was with Hutchinson telecom and later became Orange late in 1999. They are now trading under the '3' brand but I left them long before that. I was on a $40 plan that had an access cost of $20 and had $20 of "included" calls which was more like $20 worth of call that had to be made and it appears that I exceeded it by a considerable margin on several accounts. Looking at the top of each statement, I remembered that my phone number was different back then and I racked my brain to try and remember how I got the number I have now. My question was answered not long after as I saw in one of the statements several phone calls I had made to what is now my present number. 


It was to Gosford and was made at a time when my Mum had gone up to stay with my sister for a while. My number was originally my Mum's number and at some point she had given it to me and had gotten herself a new phone number. 


Also on that statement was another number I instantly recognised. It was to my ex's number since we were going out at that point in time. Hutchinson was using the Optus network then and Optus had the 20-minute 'yes' time after 8pm and so after dinner at around 8:30pm we would often take a turn at calling each other for 20-minutes so that we could have a 40-minute conversation for free. That was on top of numerous SMS's and short two-minute calls during the day to say "Hi" and "I love you" of course... 


I have trouble getting rid of these sorts of things even though I don't look at them a lot of the time. Perhaps it's a fear of losing those memories of those parts of my life. Now that I've written about it, I feel a little more comforted that the memory will not be lost even if these records are now being destroyed.