I finished a book yesterday that I have been reading for a committee report, and when I finished it I casually tossed the book mark on my desk. This evening, in an effort to straighten up my desk a little, I picked up the bookmark to put it away. As I did so, I really looked at it and realized that this is a bookmark that I have had for at least 17 years. It was lovingly, and somewhat abstractly, decorated by my oldest granddaughter which explains why I have never thrown it away.
And speaking of history, I realized, as I examined the bookmark more closely, that the decoration is colored on an old computer punch card. Are you old enough to remember those? My first husband worked with computers from the time when it took a whole room full of equipment to do less than my phone does now. Early in our marriage he taught a college statistics class for a few years. In that class his students used punch cards to do their research. At the end of each semester he brought home boxes of used punch cards, specifically for our children to color on or use in any way they chose.
Lots of those cards survived until my grandchildren were old enough to decorate them, hence the book mark.
After my first husband died I downsized and all the punch cards that were left were thrown away.
This is the last remaining relic of that bygone era. But at least it still has a function unlike my last two laptops.
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