Layers of protection

 

I pulled open the drawer of the lecture table, to stash a pair of winter gloves someone had left behind so I would have enough room to work with some students during recitation. Clearly I wasn't the first person to have done that, both drawers were full of detritus (including another pair of gloves!).

I could classify the contents as lost, left behind, or just in case.

Lost and left behind: Those gloves. Cables. So many pens and pencils. There was a Zip disk from 2000. "Hey, that looks just like the save icon!" offered one student, looking over my shoulder. I replied it wasn't a replica of the icon, rather this was the physical object from which the icon was derived.  Another remarked dryly, "That disk is from before I was born." Erk. That made me feel nearly ancient. I can clearly remember when Zip disks were state of the art.

The drawer was a trip to another time. A late colleague's notes. Unmarked vials. A vial of pure vanillin (which isn't the familiar caramel color of vanilla, but a white powder.) Pens for writing on overhead transparencies (what are those my TA wondered, while I wondered in turn when I had last used that technology, or a physical slide deck for that matter). 

Just in case: That extra pen for writing on transparencies, batteries (one so old it had burst open) and spare bulbs for the projector. Rulers, periodic tables. Period supplies. Blue books (which are coming back into vogue again thanks to AI) and scratch paper for exams.