I’ve lost a lot of things I miss, but I really miss a bunch of pictures I took the summer I worked at Busch Gardens in Florida. I spent a summer working on the African Queen Boat Ride - it was a fantastic job (it was similar to the Jungle Cruise at Disney Land, tell a bunch of funny stories to a captive audience for the duration of the ride), so many good memories. That was the last summer for the African Queen, it was torn down and replaced by the Tanganika Tidalwave (a boring big splash roller coaster-type ride). Knowing the ride would be closed soon, I spent a few days carefully documenting the entire ride.
The next year, at the end of the term, I was supposed to share a three bedroom apartment with 2 other girls. Two of the girls were going to live there over the summer and I was supposed to move in when school started in the fall. Instead of lugging all my things from the dorm room to my parents’ home 3 hours away, I moved it into the apartment. Two weeks before school started, I heard that the apartment was falling through, both of the girls were pregnant and weren’t coming back to school. The stuff I had stored there vanished completely, neither of my two “good friends” or the apartment office could ever tell me what happened to my things. My typewriter, books and those final pictures of my best summer ever - gone. I can’t even remember what else was lost, I just still wish I had those pictures.
I lost a whole collection of cool little toys that I’d been haphazardly gathering over many years: Tick action figures, McDonald’s Happy Meal toys, X-men figures, Star Wars figures…just a whole bunch of random plastic stuff that accumulated enough to cover three shelves of a bookcase.
When we moved from our last rental into the house we bought in 1999, they were all in a couple of shopping bags in the garage. We had a garage sale. Even though the stuff for sale was out in the driveway, I suspect that somebody must have sneaked into the garage and made off with them. I can’t think of any other explanation.
There’s an extremely slim chance that they’re in one of the boxes in our storage locker, but I doubt it because we went through them all a year or so ago and didn’t find the toys.
It’s not that they had a huge sentimental value with me, but when you collect that many silly things over that long, it kind of stings to lose them all at once.
When I was in HS and after I had earned my very first pay-check, I bought myself a pewter quartz ignition lighter from a manufacturer known as ‘Zaima’. It was heavy, never needed batteries, and could double as a roll-of-dimes in a pinch. Sadly, I gave it away.
2)By the time that I had become engaged in my twenties, I had collected a bunch of martial arts type items in a black canvas bag. I had cherry-wood rope nunchuks, a few combat knives, throwing stars, a wrist-rocket with a pouch of metal ball-bearings mixed with glass marbles, sharpened metal ‘jacks’ to drop when running away, etc. I gave it away all away before I got married.
(Re-reading number two, I sure hope I didn’t pass that gene on to my sons…)
I lost my first edition of “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes” when I moved house. As far as I know all my other books made the journey save that one. It wasn’t in great condition, and I only paid a couple of pounds for it, but still.
A $50 bill. Even these days nobody likes to lose that much money at one time, but it’s even worse when you’re 13 years old and the year is 1983, when $50 was worth more. I thought I might have dropped it in the store, but I had a sneaking suspicion my friend pickpocketed me (yeah, some “friend”, I know) while we were in the store and swiped it from my wallet and then put my wallet back, doing this while I was preoccupied with looking at records and tapes. How else it could have disappeared I have no idea.
My goodness this thread is sad but it’s nice to hear that some people found their lost items.
Summer of 2003: ACT bushfires took 18 out of 24 houses entirely in my street, mine included. While we weren’t too broken about it (some people were really messed up over the loss), mainly because we were in a situation to take care of ourselves - we stayed with grandparents and a friend, who owed us quite a bit of money, essentially gave us his house for six months completely free.
But there are things I really miss:
The baby doll that I’d owned since I was a baby - it had a music box and played “Lullaby”. It had no clothes and was missing a few porcelain fingers but I wanted to give that to my daughter or granddaughter, whichever came first.
Some old costume jewellery that my grandma gave me - it was gaudy, bright brooches and necklaces but they sparkled and I really miss having nice brooches I’m ridiculously picky about my brooches that I wear with buttonless jackets.
The Saudi crest necklace my dad gave me when I was little; my mum had a bigger version of it and the gold was just beautiful, I loved it so much and wore it as often as Mum let me.
My red leather wallet :(; it was just an Equip wallet but it was bright beautiful jewel red.
My baby photo album; it has photos from my ultrasound (which I took to school and lost somehow, sorry Mum) right up to pictures of me from our trip to Fiji when I was 10. It had the only pictures of me with my mum’s father, by the time we moved to the same city as he and my grandmother, he was on the road downhill with lung cancer and my mum didn’t let us see him; she didn’t want us to remember him as an angry old man.
My time capsule; Mum made a time capsule the year I was born, it had a bottle of wine from 1989, magazines and photographs plus other stuff for me to open on my 21st birthday. It makes me so sad knowing it was gone - I remember seeing it being stored in our new houses.
My brother’s cat; the most gorgeous long haired calico girl I’ve ever seen. Dumb as a box of rocks but an absolute sweetheart. Definitely miss her the most.
My laptop; I had an assortment of photos on my harddrive, which was completely eviscerated.
My first ever mobile phone. I got it in year 7 from my Dad and it was an enormous Samsung with a flip keyboard cover. What a timepiece. I would have given it to my kids to show them how they were when I first got one.
I really miss those things, along with photos of my brother as a little boy (he was a real cutie) and my mother’s heirloom jewelry and some of her best clothes. I feel sad now…
Hit submit and then remembered;
The only thing I salvaged from that fire was three tiny porcelain pieces from a display set my Dad got from Vietnam - it was a little set of shelves in the shape of a house with two little sacks of corn and flour, with a tiny porcelain tall jug, a short jug and a plate. I’ve lost the plate but I think it’s still at my mum’s house. I hope.
Many years ago I invented a game where I owned horses and entered them in shows, I wrote out pages and pages of stuff for it, horse descriptions, names of grooms, riders, entries in shows… I spent hours working on it and had great fun playing it.
I binned the lot when we moved house…
Every now and again I buy an A4 ruled feint pad for no reason other than I used to use them for my game…
For a college art project, I did an Escheresque drawing of a tower in which each floor represented a different historical style of architecture. This was on about six pieces of 11x17 drawing paper taped by the narrow ends into a giant scroll. This was in ink, shortly before then I had done a pencil study of the same concept, but on smaller pieces of paper. In some ways the study came out better than the finished piece. I’d give a lot to have either one.
While my stepdaughter was an undergraduate, she had a copy of Early Medieval Europe by Collins. I’m fascinated by that subject. I borrowed it from her briefly but knew I couldn’t keep it as she was going to need it. Then last summer when she moved to Germany she gave it to me, and then I lost it about a month later. It’s probably around the house somewhere, but the last I remember is: I had taken it to the barber shop, to read in case I should have to wait, and then walking home I stopped at the grocery store. There I put the book into the bag that they gave me at the store, and that’s the last I remember seeing or handling it.
