Michael Toliver, known affectionately by his friends and family as "Old Mike," leaned over his grandson Jim's shoulder to watch him brushing dirt from a plastic-wrapped bundle he had unearthed while digging a hole for a rosebush. Jim stood up and handed the object to his grandfather, intrigued. "Do you know what's in it?" 

Old Mike frowned momentarily as he adjusted his wire-frame glasses to examine what he held in his hands. Unwrapping the dirty plastic revealed an old wooden box. On the cover, he could barely make out a picture of Schroeder from the Peanuts comic strip, who was playing a symphony on his toy piano. Slowly, Old Mike began to smile.

"I guess you do."

"Yes and no," Old Mike replied. He turned and walked over to one of the chairs on the patio. "Let's go rest while I look at this. My old bones don't like to stand up for very long."

Together they sat, Old Mike grunting in relief. He looked down at the box in his lap. "This is a time capsule, given to me several decades ago by the first class I ever taught music to. My very first teaching job of all, actually." 

"Interesting gift for a teacher," Jim replied, raising a rust-colored eyebrow.

Old Mike chuckled. "It was an interesting bunch of kids. You had to know them to understand." He leaned his head back, looking at the clouds floating by. "I remember that first day; I was completely terrified. It was me against 31 fifth-graders. I just knew I was going to be eaten for lunch."

Jim grinned. "Obviously, you were wrong about that."

Old Mike nodded. "Had it been any other class, I probably would have been massacred. But no, this class was special. All very intelligent, eager to learn. But most of all, they just had fun. They're the main reason I kept teaching through the hard years. But I never had another class quite like them." His fingers gently stroked the lid of the box. "They gave me this on the last day of school before summer. Two of them even came over later to personally bury it for me. I was supposed to dig it up on the day of my retirement. I'd completely forgotten about it; I should have opened this years ago!"

"Hey, better late than never," Jim replied. "Why don't you open it now?"

Old Mike's lips quirked up into a wry smile. "I'm almost afraid to!" But even as he said those words, his fingers, still nimble from a lifetime of playing piano, eagerly pried open the lid. 

Jim couldn't see the contents and started to lean closer when Old Mike's shoulders started to shake. Jim grew alarmed when he saw the tears trickling down his grandfather's weathered cheek. He put his hand on his grandfather's shoulder to comfort him, then realized that Old Mike was laughing silently. "Grandpa, what -?" In answer, Old Mike handed the box to Jim for examination. 

There, laying prominently on the top of the box's contents, was a faded Polaroid of 31 fifth-grade boys and girls with their pants around their ankles, mooning their teacher from the past.