Many years ago, back in school, we discussed a book wherein the author presented modern day items as if found by archaeologists far into the future and presented crazy ideas about their uses. Maybe you will recall the author’s name or book title, as I do not.

Anyway, it is amazing how little we know of life before us. Our parents and grandparents tell us stories, but we still often don’t get it. And, our own memories fade over time, and we sometimes cannot imagine life as it was except framed by our current circumstances. We may remember not having cell phones or whatnot, but we don’t often recall the things that have completely slipped our minds, except on occasion when we may spot such a thing.

So, even life as it was a few decades ago can be difficult to picture, despite all our technology and seemingly endless recordkeeping. Even filmmakers, when researching recent historical periods, have to leaf through old catalogs to try to imagine what people realistically kept in their homes or what they wore or what type of pens, tools and other necessary items were used or looked like.

Think about it. While great pieces of art, or monuments, or historical events are often well photographed and recorded, who thinks of maintaining some kind of record of the ordinary things we use everyday? Even though archaeologists are quite excited when they uncover primitive homes of ordinary people which help illustrate the way the average person lived 100, 500, 1000 or more years ago, today we don’t seem to do much about recording the same. We concern ourselves with how the president lives, how the wealthy live, and so on, but not so much about the ordinary person.

Thus, as a favor to future generations, as well as our own children or grandchildren, I am starting this “Mundane Monday” meme.

To participate, just write, illustrate, photograph or in some other way depict everyday life or mundane things. And, link back to me and leave a comment for some link love in return.

For my inaugural Mundane Monday, I humbly present to you the Plastic Bag:

As you know, we use plastic bags for a multitude of uses, primarily for carrying purchased goods home from the store. This particular plastic bag arrived with an eBay purchase. Inside is corrugated cardboard that was used in the shipping packaging. You can also see a bit of the USPS tape that was used to tape the stuff up. At this point, I actually don’t remember what I received in it–I think it may have been glassware of some sort–but that’s not important now.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 10th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Mundane Monday. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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