Skip to content

What's in the Box in the Box in the Box?

2015-03-03 · story · John · 3:07 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Personal life · mode: Personal update

John opens a box of childhood memorabilia, finds mostly empty boxes, a few keepsakes and his baby book with his parents' first words ('he's ugly', 'he's so purple'), and concludes that life is about people rather than things, and that he can't imagine his life without Hank.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Greeting; the box unexplored for 10 years: science fair participant badge, glasses, contact lens and soccer photos, Academic Decathlon medals

  • ★★ John says he recently discovered a box of childhood memorabilia, unexplored for at least 10 years, and will find out what's inside. — 00:00:01
  • ★★ Finding a science and engineering fair participant badge, John jokes that their parents keeping his participant ribbon perhaps explains why Hank is the brother who took apart an adding machine. (playful, hedged) — 00:00:18 · Hank Green, Sydney Green, Mike Green
  • ★ The box holds photos of John in glasses he regrets, from his brief experiment with contact lenses, and from when he was the worst player on his childhood soccer team. (playful) — 00:00:30
  • ★ The box also holds John's Academic Decathlon medals. — 00:00:37

00:00:39 — Boxes inside the box: the box collection, empty boxes, a homecoming rose, a baby tooth, Cub Scout patches, a German stamp, pennies, the cigar box of flower photos

  • ★★ John says he had a box collection as a kid, meaning until his early twenties, so the rest of the box is boxes. (playful) — 00:00:43
  • ★★ One box holds a rose from John's tenth-grade homecoming dance date, and a baby tooth, his or at any rate someone's. — 00:01:06
  • ★ Other boxes hold Cub Scout patches from 1985, a stamp from Germany and a bunch of pennies he doesn't know why he kept. (playful) — 00:01:20
  • ★★ Finding a box of pennies, John declares that pennies shouldn't even exist. (playful) — 00:01:38
  • ★★ His most beloved childhood box, a cigar box, holds mostly pictures of flowers and one of himself perhaps eating a snake: the one picture of himself he chose to keep. (playful) — 00:02:09

00:02:12 — The baby milestones book: hospital bracelet, Polaroids, footprints, Mom's and Dad's first words about him

  • ★★★ At the bottom is his baby milestones book filled out by their parents, recording their first words about him: Mom wrote 'he's ugly!' and Dad 'he's so purple!'. — 00:02:29 · Sydney Green, Mike Green

00:02:43 — Lessons: put things in your boxes; life is about people; he can't imagine life without Hank; sign-off

  • ★★★ John concludes from the trip down memory lane that life is not so much about things as about people and what we do together. (hedged) — 00:02:48
  • ★★★ John says you could go through the whole box without knowing he had a brother, yet it is impossible for him to imagine his life without Hank. — 00:02:53 · Hank Green

Humor (significant)

  • John finds his science and engineering fair participant badge. — 00:00:14

    “I didn't finish first, I didn't finish second or third, but I did participate.”

  • He opens a lovely box given to him by his college girlfriend. — 00:00:53

    “It's empty, that's a metaphor.”

  • John asks what Hank thinks is in the next box. — 00:01:43

    “You'll never guess unless you guess boxes.”

  • The baby book records his parents' first words about him; Mom wrote 'he's ugly'. — 00:02:35

    “And my dad said, he's so purple, exclamation point.”

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Abolish the US penny · Germany · Mike Green · Sydney Green · United States Academic Decathlon

Replies to

← Previous: In Which Hank is the Nerdiest Nerd · Next → WE WON! Net Neutrality and Re-Thinking Cynicism