secret messages
Don't you just love finding secret messages? I do. Such sweet little surprises.
Garage saling in St. Louis, we found this tiny vintage (school?) table with three chairs and hauled it all the way home so it could gather dust in the basement for a couple of years. Yesterday I brought it up, wiped it down, and shored up the wobbly legs. When I opened the drawer on one end, this drawing was hiding inside.
I thought about it for a long time. Who drew it? Did they love someone or were they just doodling? Where are they now? Then this morning I remembered these.
These are on the underneath side of our dining table, which we purchased at a garage sale in our old neighborhood before we were even married. The one on the left makes me smile. The arrow points to one end of the table where someone would sit. Here's how it plays out in my mind: someone shy had a boy over and planted the message beforehand. She arranged for him to sit in that spot and the whole time they worked on their science project, she knew, that her love was secretly declared to him. (It could have happened!)
But the secret messages I find most often are in my sketch book when I leave it down low. Scribbly little faces. Wonky train engines. The name of a tiny boy who is learning to read and write. I don't mind one bit. They make me smile too.
Have you ever found any messages like these?
Comments
In our house, the previous owner's kids left their names carved in some of the woodwork, but no special messages. I still don't mind the etchings though. I even left their little baby's handprints on the nursery wall for a couple years until we had to paint it!
Posted by: amy h | October 19, 2006 04:08 PM
Oh I love those!
The secret messages I find are more like the ones in your notebook...little hearts and curly letters spelling my girls' names.
Posted by: erin | October 19, 2006 06:10 PM
I LOVE this post... I have received secret notes from a certain little-big girl in our house... I have saved most of them ... such treasures !
Posted by: diana | October 19, 2006 06:49 PM
This post made me smile. How very sweet. I do find little scribbles everywhere these days, but not always in the most appropriate places, like on the back seat of the van and on the bathroom cabinet door. I know exactly who did them because she wrote her name *grin*.
Posted by: beki | October 20, 2006 07:50 AM
Great post! I have found lots of these little messages on thrifted things through the years...along with wads of gum and such. I have a lot of old children's books too with writings and doodlings from their previous owners. In our home, there is a closet that has an access panel to the tub and under the house. The house has no chimney so my cousin and I were once concerned with how Santa would get in the house. We took a marker and wrote "Santa" inside this closet, so he would know where to go-entrance through access panel. ha! When we moved back to this house it was still there. Santa. heh.
Posted by: Angela | October 20, 2006 11:11 AM
we have a few old school desks with inscriptions. i think they are very cool.
and the pix on the left makes me smile, too!!!
Posted by: lera | October 20, 2006 01:08 PM
Oh yeah...every once in a while I'll find one of my (or Steven's) old college notebooks with all kinds of secret messages. Ah, young love! lol!
And, I don't know if this counts, but, I found this in a trunk at my mom's house this summer...something I made when I was about 7 years old.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/artsmith/238736320/in/set-72057594128490533/
Posted by: Lauri Smith | October 21, 2006 11:58 AM
We have a china cabinet that was my grandmother's when my mom and her sisters were young. My "never do anything wrong" Aunts' name is carved into it. She claims someone must have set her up, I'm not so sure.
Posted by: Mama Urchin | October 21, 2006 11:59 AM
What a sweet post. I love your made up story about the shy girl with the secret crush. I know I totally would have done something like that when I was younger.
Posted by: Joanna | October 21, 2006 10:04 PM
Most of our stuff is second hand also, so I have found many things, but nothing as sweet as your secrets.
Posted by: Veronica TM | October 23, 2006 05:57 PM
I have found many sweet messages that made me smile but one day I found that my daughter took a sharpie to a 2 page spread in our scrapbook. Sigh...lately though she has been making mermaids and castles and I keep nearly every one of them.
Posted by: Selena | October 23, 2006 10:44 PM
We bought a desk once and when we got it home I opened a drawer all the way and found a piece of paper with a name and phone number scrawled on it. Turns out the name was of an old high school friend. The number wasn't good anymore, but I know it was the same person because I bought the desk at a yard sale in my home town and there aren't enough people there for multiple people with the same name. I only wish the number had still been good!
Posted by: jenney | October 25, 2006 10:29 PM