A pink women's baseball cap, small model of a Star Wars ship, wooden block knife holder with no knives, beige pants, small wooden snail

The snail is lovely, a dark wood (cherry maybe), smooth, the size of a golf ball.  It reminds me of two carved horse heads I found once and still have.  They are the size of the snail, also carved from a darker wood.  I have the idea that I found them while living in Scotland at age 11, but this may be pure fabrication.  I don't remember finding them. But horse heads figured heavily that year.  (No Godfather jokes, please.)  One of my two faithful pen pals, Amy Pitsker, would include with most of her letters her latest drawings of horse heads.  My other faithful pen pal, Tina Hieken, often sent drawings she'd made of ideas she had for women's fashions, complete with details about color and fabric. 

I remember finding those fountain pens with ink cartridges halfway into that year and using them on my blue air mail paper.  Amy used the cartridge fountain pens as well, and she and I wrote to each other about the merits of the black vs. the blue ink - both preferring the blue because it was somehow a richer color.  Tina wrote about being cast as Lucy in the play Charlie Brown and having snippy exchanges with classmates who suggested this was type casting.

I still have most of these letters.  Opening one when it came was like opening a gift.