love notes

Imagine that I'm sitting here, shuffling the money that massah gave me to pay some bills online when I get an email alert. I got a couple of email addresses and I very rarely check THAT one. I am experiencing a serious backlog on the home-related newsletters that I have sent there and a blogger or 2 from my past may drop me a line there only once every mango season.

Anyways, I click on the alert and, lo and behold, its an email from this guy that I went to elementary and junior high school with. We were probably the 2 nerdiest people in our 8-person gifted class, with huge plastic glasses that competed for the limited space on our cheeks. Somehow...and I don't recall how...he was labeled my boyfriend. I don't remember when or if he formally asked me in the 6th grade, but it was just known. I used to like him b/c he used to draw all of these cool things and he got me into creating my own superheroes and drawing my own comic books. I think that is how we spent time together...drawing together b/c I remember trying to emulate his skills. We'd top it off by going to the snoball stand. Yes, it was THAT hot and heavy. I don't even remember why we broke up. Then, the handful of us that shared that gifted class ended up going to the same junior high school so we kinda stuck together...at least for a little while. But in the 7th grade, he hit me with the news that he was moving away. We weren't "together" but I don't think that I took it very well.

So a while back, he found me on myspace. I had to practically stare at his picture b/c this dude is FAR from being a nerd now. He lives in ATL and if I read correctly, he is a recording artist of some sort. I'm sure ATL has a bunch of underground recording artists. I know, b/c I dated someone else who should STILL be down there doing the same thing. Nowadays, you are hard-pressed to NOT find someone who supposedly has a record contract or who isn't striving to work for Di.ddy.

Back to the email...

The email is just a regular one-of-the-mill, whatchu' been up to emails, right? Why did this dude attach a scanned copy of a poem that I wrote to him 18 years ago? In fact, if he hadn't attached it, I would have denied EVER writing a dude a poem...but unfortunately I did. And I would attach it here if I didn't think that it was the lamest, wackest stuff that I've ever read in my life. How in the world did I ever keep a "boyfriend" with my subpar romantic skills? And to top it off, half of it did not make any sense whatsoever. I'm hoping that the words that I can't really decipher are part of some secret language that a group of us nerds shared...wait a minute...then again, I hope not b/c the resurfacing of this proof of my lame-ness is enough.

I had my fair share of "love" and "like" notes that I used to keep in a hot pink Kaboo.dles box. I'm not sure of how far they dated back since I lost those notes and that box to the storm. But I remember looking back at them while in college and getting a kick out of what was said. Ya know, I never thought that guys were as sentimental as females can be.

So here are the questions:

Do you keep old love letters? Why? Do they still have the power to change your mood? How often do you peek at them? And as far as keeping them, how long is TOO long?