We recently moved to a new house, and my husband washed a duffle bag that got dirty in the process. When I opened the clothes dryer, a set of keys (worth about $450, with the fancy key fobs) fell out. It had been missing for about a year.
When I bought my first house in 1980, I was stowing my stuff in the basement and I found a knife in a scabbard. It had an eagle head on the end of the handle and it was marked “Germany.” I don’t know if it was a war souvenir or just something the previous owner of the house had bought. And I don’t think I’ll ever know now, because I have no idea what became of it. Don’t know if I lost a priceless antique (doubtful) or something that might have fetched a few dollars on Craigslist. Oh well…
Far more interesting - right after my husband and I got married, we bought a 1937 gaff-rigged pilot cutter (an old wooden sailboat for you non-boatfolk) from John, who asked if we were interested as he was was working on it in a boatyard. After we took possession and moved it to a marina, we were going thru all the storage lockers and nooks, making space for our stuff. In a locker under the forward berth, we found a leg. :eek: OK, a prosthetic leg, but still, I think it qualifies as interesting. We contacted John to see if he wanted it back - as an aside, John had lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident. Anyway, he didn’t want it - he said it was his “dancin’ leg” and it never fit right so we could have it. It became a prop on many a Halloween, and I think it’s in our attic right now. Maybe we should leave it there for the next owners of this place.
It didn’t fit anyone in the family, and that was my kiddie toy box. I think it came from when I was working as a teenager, and we’d cleared out the old lost propery box- all stuff that had been unclaimed for at least 2 years- mainly coats and hats, all the staff were asked if they wanted any of the stuff in there before it got thrown out, and I guess we all just thought it was costume jewellery at the time, being poor teenagers. It just about fits my thumb, which is probably why I kept it- I’m really not the jewellery type.
It was a bit of a shock to discover it was real diamond.
Most recently I found a little coin issued at the Motorola car show in 1956 at the Moulon Rouge( spelling?) in Hollywood. My father took me there to see the cars comming out the next year and things the car makers were experimenting on for the future. Within 2 days it was lost again.I think it was called Motorama?
We picked up a used dresser from our neighbors, Phil & Tammy. When I was cleaning it out so we could move it upstairs, I found that a Victoria’s Secret C-cup bra had fallen to the bottom of the dresser. I asked my wife if I should return it to them, and she pointed out that Tammy doesn’t wear a C-cup, so perhaps we should just not mention it…
About a year ago, I was cleaning out my closet - long overdue, and the closet was… rather unkempt. Way, way in the back, underneath a whole bunch of other stuff, I found a backpack that didn’t look familiar. I picked it up, and it had quite a heft to it… there was something substantial in there. Curious, I opened it up, and it was some sort of machinery, with different parts. I started pulling it all out, trying to figure out what it was, when it finally dawned on me that it was a… breast milk pump.
I am a single guy. Live alone. Never been married. I honestly have no idea how a breast milk pump got in the back of my closet. I mean, I’ve had friends who were pregnant, but I can’t imagine why they would have brought their breast milk pump over my place, and if they’d left it here, you’d think a) they would have realized at some point and asked me about it, or b) if I’d found it, you’d think I would have tried to figure out whose it was, not have chucked it in the back of my closet, and not have completely forgotten about it.
When I first moved out and got my own apartment, I was cleaning out my old bedroom at home, and under the bed found an old uncashed paycheck from a year before. The expiration date was the next week.
I bought a used car, and after I had driven it around for a couple of months I noticed a little cutout in the dashboard. Maybe it was intended for putting coins or something in. It was next to the steering wheel. I noticed that it had a removable bottom, and I thought, oh, what a great place to store an extra couple of twenties in case I get stuck somewhere without gas money sometime. I lifted up the removable bottom by prying it with a paperclip, and there was a ten dollar bill, folded up nice and neat. Someone’s emergency cash stash. I had a good laugh.
This one reminds me. After I got divorced, my ex and I were still on fairly decent speaking terms, would go out to movies, etc. When we were together, she’d occasionally ask if I’d found “anything of hers” that she’d like to know about. Uhh… nope. Our friendship petered out.
A couple of years later, my wardrobe was beginning to expand, and I decided to clean out and rearrange the dresser to make room. I’d never used the bottom drawer, and opened it up to discover that she had forgotten all of her lingerie and a few toys when she moved out. I get the feeling that she assumed I was keeping it for my own weird purposes.
When I bought my last home, I knew that the owner had died of a heart attack in the living room, so it didn’t surprise me to find small blood splatters on the wall.
What did surprise me was finding an old photo album filled with black and white pics of people in a Nazi death camp. There were also terrible pics of opened mass graves. Those pics will be in my mind forever.
I could be wrong, but I assumed it was because the EMT’s were jabbing him with needles while trying to keep him alive. Back when I was able to donate blood, I would sometimes splatter the tech if I was stuck wrong.
It was only small splatters, but the pattern looked like one stick sprayed.
Why would a heart attack cause blood spatters?