old papers, a few of them useful and interesting

[redbird]

I had expected to find my birth certificate and college diploma in one of the boxes I went through some weeks ago, and hadn't. Email with rysmiel reminded me of this, and of the general ongoing decluttering (I'm still cluttered by rysmiel's standards, but they're offering useful encouragement from a distance such that the mess is not irritating them). I mentioned it to cattitude, who reminded me of where some other boxes are. I also remembered the ancient filing cabinet in the bedroom, and decided to look there.

First, I got rid of a few obviously-unneeded things, like an ancient pad of newsprint paper for sketching, and a letter-size binder with tabs for every letter of the alphabet, and no actual content.

In the next drawer I looked in, I found an envelope labeled "Vicki birth certificates." There they are, the originals from the hospital (somewhere, there's a certified copy from the Board of Health from sometime in the 1980s). It also contains an infant vaccination record.

I was vaccinated for polio using both vaccines, a total of six doses. I have also been vaccinated against smallpox. And measles, DPT, and whatever was on later pages: I'm just startled that I got both polio vaccines. Not knowing where that paper was, I was revaccinated for measles in 1984 when it went around the dorms, but adrian_turtle says she was told in 1982 that the old vaccine didn't give lasting immunity, so it may be just as well.

I am not in a good state of mind for purging things. With the first bag of stuff, as I was about to throw it away, I brought it back into the apartment, put it down, and confirmed that I had not somehow put the important papers there instead of in the trash. With the second, I decided that no, I wasn't prepared to throw away mailings of an apa just because I had thrown away other mailings of the same apa that had been in a box,and removed half of what was in the bag. So, I will do no further decluttering tonight, though I am willing and able to tell Cattitude that I don't want an old, possibly broken, large clicky keyboard, or an extremely right-handed trackball.

Comments

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Smart of you to /s/t/o/p/ pause in the decluttering when you noticed that you were saving mailings of an APA you'd previously decided to discard. (I've done that -- saved some distributions of APA-L, of all things (it's remarkably ephemeral) -- and didn't realize until later just how silly this was.)

Probably the "DPT" infant inoculation was for Diptheria.

[redbird]

Oh, I know what DPT is, it's the three-in-one diphtheria/pertussis (whooping cough)/tetanus shot (for which I last had a booster in the summer of 2000).

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks, I didn't realise that the three were combined (and, stupidly or carelessly, misread you as saying "whatever that was").

[geekosaur]

DPT = diphtheria/pertussis (whooping cough)/tetanus.
I got both Salk and Sabin vaccines, probably because of my dad's run-in with polio.

[rezendi.livejournal.com]

I have also been vaccinated against smallpox.

I am oddly jealous.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

It is a bit odd to be jealous of people's health status just because they are 10 years older. As far as I can tell, smallpox vaccination stopped being part of the routine set given to US babies in the late 1960s, and stopped being available at all in the early 1970s.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

We got stuck on Treasure Island for three weeks when we were supposed to be there three days because my smallpox vaccination didn't take. Finally they went ahead and let us go to Guam.