I was putting some training wheels on my son’s new bike today because he still isn’t fully comfortable without them. In the conversation that followed, I thought about bikes I’ve had in the past. Most of them aren’t anything I would really want back compared to what I have, but in high school I had spent a bunch of my savings to order a Specialized Fatboy. It was great and I rode that thing all over the place. There wasn’t a trail that I wouldn’t take it on. When I went to college, my parents sold it to some local kid. Now, roughly 10 years since I last saw it, it would cost me $350-$400 for a similar one on ebay. I loved that bike, but I don’t think I’d spend that much on a toy-size bike for myself. My road bike and mountain bike are nice, but I’ll stick with just them for now.
As a kid, I had several Man From U.N.C.L.E. toys: the camera that unfolded to a pistol, the radio that unfolded to a carbine, the cigarette lighter than popped a gun barrel, and, best of all, the THRUSH sniper rifle toy, where you could look through the scope, pull the trigger, and silhouettes of enemy agents would pop up, indicating a kill. Way cool.
What kind of idiot I must have been to let those go! Waah! Even broken, they were super cool toys!
I want to ask why your parents sold the bike you bought with your own money, but the things I loved as a kid I had no control over. My mother got rid of things as she saw fit.
I had saved but then gave away all my sons baby furniture about two years before I remarried and had my second child. We could have used the crib, stroller, and highchair etc. but I’d given it to a family I knew whose house burned down, and they had a baby. No regrets.
The past few years we’ve sold our handed-down antiques trying to make mortgage payments (to no avail.) When I let myself think about them now I know they bought us time. And everybody only owns things for a little while.
Anyone my age could give you a list of cars from the 40’s and 50’s that they bought for $50.00 or so and now are worth maybe $50,000 so I wont touch the car aspect or the house aspect either for that matter.
My biggest regrets are my old shotguns, not super valuable but they were to me, 28 guage remington 1100, 12 guage remington 1100, 12 guage browning over and under (model?) Had just gotten divorced and was selling all I had to raise some money.
I basically abandoned it about 6 months before I went to college behind the shed at my parents. I think they were having a yard sale that fall and some kid asked. I’m sure she called me or asked, but I probably thought “Meh - I won’t ride it…”
It wasn’t a great bicycle or anything, but I definitely spent more on it than any other (excluding the road bike I have now). I also rode the heck out of it. My mountain bike now is an attempt to get back what I had before - I drove my family halfway across the state on a Saturday to buy a 17 year old GT hardtail I found on craigslist. I’m beginning to think I have a slight bicycle addiction.
We’ve had a few cars that I think back and wonder if I should’ve kept them. Not that they were great, but I drove a Lancer when my oldest was our only child. It was paid off, but when baby #2 came I traded it in for a Highlander. Now my wife drives the Highlander, I drive her sedan, and I wonder if I should have just kept the Lancer instead of paying for the new car.
When I was a kid, I had a toy wagon that I loved: It operated like a typical child’s wagon, but you could also lift a portion of the bottom of the wagon to reach the pedals, and steer with the pull handle. I have no idea what the brand was - I’ve never seen another one like it, and it was one of those childhood items that disappeared before I was an adult. (I truly think that my grandmother used it as a plant stand and threw it away after it got too rusty for her taste.) I’d really like to have that thing - my kids would enjoy it, and it would make me happy.
I wish I still had my first car, too, even though I couldn’t afford to operate it now: 1975 Cadillac Sedan DeVille land yacht, with every bell or whistle that could be added. I loved that car (except when it was time to put gas in it or parallel park.)
The thing I really, really wish I still had, though, is my mother’s wedding ring. I hate to think it, but I’m pretty sure that my stepson or one of his friends took it. It wasn’t very valuable, but it meant something to me.
When my son was rummaging through some old photo albums (he was 13), he found a picture of my '69 Camaro RS. He looked up and said: “Please tell me this is in a storage building somewhere, waiting for me to turn 16.”
Note: Google image, but very very close to accurate.
One I regret, not that I need it or really want it now, but at the time it was heartbreaking.
Me and my sister collected stuffed animals. I had a lion that was my first, there were a number of others. One year, my sister and I received a gorilla each. We loved them.
After a couple years, my mom made a run through on our toy collections to pull out some of the toys we were no longer using/needing. Most of them were younger things, toys for toddlers and the likes, so we didn’t really miss them.
Then she had this brilliant idea that we needed to give up something special. I don’t know how it came about, but for some reason she wanted us to give up some of our stuffed animals. Then she put specifically on the list (a) my lion (and something or other of my sister’s of equal meaning), and (b) our gorillas. We fought like hell. We argued, we screamed and cried, we did everything we could. Finally, she made us choose.
That’s right, she made me choose between my two favorite stuffed animals, keep only one. Now there were half a dozen others that I would have let her take to keep these two. I even tried to make that deal. But she wouldn’t budge on it. I couldn’t give up the rabbits those were gifts, I couldn’t give up the turtle, that was unique and hand made, etc. So it boiled down to being forced to give up my gorilla.
I played with stuffed animals for a few more years. We ended up getting a few new ones. But I always remember that gorilla, and wish I had been able to keep it.
I’m not sure if they got lost, or given away behind my back, but my Transformers from when I was a kid. I collect TFs, now, and it would be nice if I had all the ones from my childhood again. (Right now the oldest I have is from about 12 years after I stopped collecting the first time, or 6 years after my old ones disappeared.)
My high school marching band is on its second new set of uniforms since I graduated. I got a flyer last summer promoting bags and pillows they were making out of the old uniforms and selling. I was excited to buy one until I realized they were not my uniform but the uniforms that were being retired - the ones purchased the year after I left.
Anyway, I have no idea what happened to our old uniforms and I wish I had had the opportunity to buy a coat or a hat, when they switched them out.
I can’t think of anything “personal” I have lost. My Cabbage Patch Kids, Care Bears, Nintendo and baseball cards are all still with me. My Barbies are gone but I have no remorse for them. Maybe my Garbage Pail Kids…
I got my son a used dirt bike when he was 12 or 13. His mom didn’t want it at their house so I had it at mine and rode it a few times. About a year later, a friend of his offered him a little more than I’d originally paid for it. He saw dollar signs. I told him it was his and he could do as he pleased. He sold it. I wish he hadn’t, I kinda liked it.
I was briefly into baseball cards in the mid-late 80’s. Procured, the sold, the rookie cards of Ken Griffey Jr. and Roger Clemens. Well, the Clemens one isn’t worth as much now as you might have thought at one time, but I wish I had hung onto them anyway…
