Mathew Bolden, an eighth grade student at Waynesville Middle School, created a phenomenon box about his life.

The narrative: The turtle figurine is important to me because turtles are my favorite animal and I think they are really cool. When I was four I got a stuffed turtle, and when I first saw it, I instantly loved it. Now about nine years later I have three live turtles along with a lot of other things that revolve around turtles. I have pictures of roller coasters because I love thrill rides and I’ve been on nearly one hundred different roller coasters during my lifetime. My favorite of all is Top Thrill Dragster, which goes from zero to 120 miles per hour in four seconds and is 420 feet tall. I remember the roller coaster took off and I screamed. However, I didn’t have the lung capacity to scream all the way from launch to where it started up the hill. The wind caught my cheeks and eyelids and it felt like my face was peeling off, as though I were in a cartoon. The model of the Eiffel Tower is part of me because when I was six, I went to Paris. The most memorable part of going up in the tower was the wind. It was so windy on top, it was extremely hard to open the door. I wanted something to remember the trip, so I got the model because the Eiffel Tower was the most impressive thing I saw while I in Paris. I’m in Boy Scouts so I wanted to include the merit badge as part of my phenomena. I joined Boy Scouts because they go camping and hiking a lot, and I enjoy doing that. Plus the things they teach us in Boy Scouts do come in handy when I’m out in the forest. The pinecone represents my love of the environment and nature, and I try to protect it and do good things for it. It always makes me mad when I see someone throw a bottle or can on the ground, because I think that if people would put just a little effort in their lives we wouldn’t have pollution problems. The squishy ball represents me because I have all sorts of weird items like that in my room and I think they’re amusing. Where some people see junk, I see a fun toy. The alien is in my box because I think there is intelligent life on planets other than Earth, and I always think about how cool it would be to have aliens come to Earth. Also I watch a lot of Star Trek, so I think aliens are cool. My last bit of phenomena is a dog magnet. Both my mom and I love animals so that’s a connection to our love of pets. One time for Christmas we got our cat some catnip. We poured a little out and got our cat near it. She sniffed it and went crazy. She started rolling and twisting in it, looking like she was having a heart attack. We all were laughing at our hilarious cat. All the things that I own tell a story about me, past and present, and they may provide a window into my future. My stuff—my phenomena.