Party poppers are the key to my future

There's a little party popper in my room -- one of those capsules that explode confetti when you pull the string. Around the age of six, I pocketed it from a party, thinking I would save it for a special occasion. It lay in the top drawer of my dresser for years. Occasionally I would dig it out from amongst the other odds and ends I had squirreled away, rolling it between my fingers and considering pulling the string and ending the suspense right then and there. I would always put it back, though, and in that manner, it somehow accumulated a certain degree of importance simply I allowed it to do so.

I wondered on what occasion I would finally pull the string. Nothing seemed quite important enough. Birthdays rolled around and left for another year, fifth grade and middle school graduations passed, and still the intact party popper rested in my room. It wasn't that the actual act of pulling the string was really some monumental event. The thing was, by a complete accident, I had ensured that wherever I finally set that party popper free would be the most important event so far of my life. To pull the string in some way meant that I had declared my most important event. And I couldn't help but feel that once I pulled that string, once it was over, I would feel let down.

Eventually the heavy temptation to just pull the string subsided out of necessity into a vague curiosity that lingers in the back of my head. I still have that teal capsule somewhere in my room. I'm not sure where it is, but given its track record over the past eleven years, I'm pretty confident that it will turn up. Now, funnily enough, I'm reconsidering when I should pull it. I no longer feel enough affection for high school to let it loose at my graduation. Maybe at my eventual/possible/hopeful marriage, but then that would deemphasize the importance of my kid's birth, if that ever happens. At this rate, I'll be delegating somebody to pull it at my funeral, when nobody but me -- and I'll be dead, so I won't care -- knows why it's important.

And, to be frank, I'm starting to think that possibly, probably, when I finally pull that string, nothing will happen. My wrist won't be sharp enough, or maybe the little bit of whatever-it-is that causes the tiny explosion already expired five years ago. It's possible that the little paper confetti is stuck to the plastic that is maybe slightly melted. Somehow, I'll be letting my six year old self down. So maybe, at least for now, it's better to leave the capsule intact. Maybe if I never pull the string, I'm allowing every second of my future to be a contender for the Most Important Event. And maybe that's what I've really wanted all along.