When I was in 5-8 grade I read a couple hundred books about WWII. This was easy because dad had 2 bookcases crammed with WWII literature. I went to visit my father one time and saw that the 2 bookcases were gone. When asked where the books were my dad said. “I did you a favor and donated all those away. Now you won’t have to deal with them when I’m gone.”
I wanted to scream, “NO! you fool! How could you.” But they were his books and, he was trying to do me a favor, so I just kept quiet. Now every time a WWII thread comes up on the dope I lament the fact that I have lost two great reference sources, my dad and the books. (Now you know why my WWII posts are vague or slightly inaccurate.)
Make me feel better, tell me about things people gave away that you really would have liked.
When I graduated from college, I returned to my parents’ house for a year. They’d emigrated so I had the place to myself.
While I was rooting around in the garage, I found a load of old vinyl records. I asked my brother and sister what they were, and neither of them knew.
I was having a garage sale anyway, so I threw them onto a table.
Turns out, when my parents came back for a vacation, they were my great aunt’s original 78 rpm records from the 1930s and 1940s. About 200 originals of jazz, classical, swing, wartime stuff. They were holding on to them for a few months while she moved house.
I had sold the lot for about £10.
Fortunately, mine was only a close call. When my grandparents died and my mom was sorting thru their stuff, I’d asked for an old print that used to hang over the mantel in their front room. It wasn’t valuable or even particularly pretty - kind of a sepia print of a sailboat at anchor. I have very vivid memories of sitting on the couch in the front room looking at that picture. I’ve even had dreams that took place in the scene, so it meant a lot to me, and I wanted to have it.
And it disappeared. I was living 800 miles away, so it was up to Mom and my sibs to sort out a lifetime of stuff, some good, some crap. And in the process of sorting, the print disappeared. Mom was very apologetic - she thought maybe it got sent to Goodwill by mistake. I was really upset because it was such a strong link between my childhood and my grandparents.
A few weeks later, Mom came across the print, and it’s now hanging in my family room. I can’t believe how “losing” it affected me - it was probably tied in with my grief at the time. As a result, before I toss anything, I ask my daughter if she has any interest in it - lesson learned.
My grandfather was a big pipe smoker and had maybe two dozen pipes. I told him, my mother, and anyone else who would listen that I wanted as many of his pipes as they were willing to give me once he had passed and since no one else expressed any interest in them, I thought I’d at least get a few.
When he died my mom looked for the pipes and couldn’t find any of them. It turns out my uncle, who was very anti-smoking, threw them all away a few weeks before my grandfather died. I was a upset, but since there was nothing I could do, I just forgot about them.
When his furniture was split up, I wound up with a night stand and an armoire from his room. The armoire had a little hidden drawer inside that my dad found when he was loading it on to the truck to take to me. Inside was his favorite churchwarden and his tobacco bag.
When I was a kid we had a beautiful Steinway baby grand in the living room. Nobody played it on a regular basis, but my father practiced his choir songs on it, my brother and his friends had jazz “jam sessions” with it, and I occasionally played it just for fun.
Well, my brother and I left home and our father eventually developed Anzheimer’s. So on one of my visits home, the living room looked unusually large and empty. OMG, the piano’s gone! Oh yeah, my mother gave it to the lady next door . . . for $100. A Steinway baby grand is worth several thousand dollars.
Now I’m living in the house alone. I’d kill for a baby grand. Doesn’t even have to be a Steinway.
My mom threw away my comic book collection, a couple hundred Marvel comics from the 70’s. It’s a cliche, but I am not making it up. We were walking through Target and I pointed out some T-shirts in the men’s section that had Marvel characters printed on them. “See that, Mom? Here I am, 40 years later, practically an old lady, and the Marvel comics are more popular than other. Those comic books you tossed could have been sold and funded my retirement!”
I only had to trophies, for my 1st and 2nd seasons of soccer as a little kid. When I came back from a semester of college, my mom had given the better (first) one to one of the kids in her preschool. For a lark. I’m still bitter 20 years later, more from her subsequent actions than the actual trophy theft.
One day, I came home and found out that my mother had sold all my Spanish Marvel comic books as old paper, because “you haven’t bought any in months!” Uh, Mom, the editorial house went bust…
That includes the complete first Spanish edition of Death of Phoenix, which isn’t worth shite any more since it got re-edited, but the thought of selling it as old paper is still painful enough to send your average middle-aged Spanish (ex-)comic-book reader into hysterics.
One day I came home from work and my mom had given away my cat. But I’ve already discussed that in another thread.
My problem is the opposite - when I got divorced, I left with only what fit in my small car. My mom agreed to store my piano, and a few boxes. I didn’t want anything else, wanted to start out fresh.
Imagine my chagrin to find out when I moved back that my mom had “bought” a lot of things back from my ex-husband from his yard sales - because she thought I might like them. I realize she was much more sentimental than I was - which makes it doubly hard to make her believe I really don’t want the stuff.
My mum’s father was a stamp collector. He had a just about complete collection of British stamps from the 1840s onwards, and loads of old and rare items from overseas. I remember my mum pointing out a stamp in her album from when she took up the hobby as a girl - it was worth about £75 and that was one of her father’s duplicates.
After my grandfather died, about 40 years ago, mum’s brother took his stamp albums to a dealer to have them valued. And never collected them. And eventually forgot where he’d taken them.
My mother still occasionally brings this up - it’s a sore point. Even though stamp-collecting is nowhere near as popular as it was in the 1980s, that collection would still be worth many thousands.
Never mind.
I hope Grandpa has a backhoe or something equally impressive to help with all of those vehicle burials. :eek:
Grandmom has a probably-not-THAT-old Catholic Bible which has a tooled leather (or is it called “molded leather”?) cover picturing “Christ knocking at the door”.
I come over one day & wonder where it is. Well, some second cousin had joined the RCC & Grandmom gave her that Bible. We (Grandmom, my parents & myself) weren’t even Catholic anymore but I really wanted that cool looking Bible. I’d have gladly bought the 2nd Cousin a Catholic Bible, but still I couldn’t very well call her & say “Um, about that Bible that Grandmom gave you…”
My brother would say “The Evel Knievel toy motorcycle Dad gave to the little boy next door years ago” BUT in Dad’s defense, my brother broke open that little boy’s EK toy cycles’ plastic casing in order to fix the stuck gears for him but the gears & then the plastic casing turned out to be unrepairable, so the little boy was left with a totally broken up toy instead of an intact one that just didn’t work.
When my dad was in Vietnam, his mom threw away a bunch of his baseball cards and all of his comic books (from the 50s and 60s). Dad still has a lot of cards left but he still can’t get over the loss.
When I was about 5, my grandmother gave me a Lionel Train set, a Santa Fe Diesel. Every year at Christmas we took it out and added a part; a switch, a trainside accessory, another train car. I have a picture of me in my pajamas playing with the train under the tree.
It got me interested in model trains, so I obtained a kit for an HO engine to start. But I could never get it to work. I never put it completely together and lost interest. The HO engine never went beyond a pile of worthless parts.
Many years later, when my mother was trying to reduce the household goods that were taking up useless space and could be put to better use or the trash, she asked me if I still wanted any of my trains.
I said the HO engine was of no concern, but the Lionel set was something I always wanted to keep and UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD SHE GIVE THE LIONEL AWAY.
You guess it – years later, I found out she kept the wrong one and gave the Lionel away. And she couldn’t remember who she gave them to. Dang.
I had the full set of “international” GI Joes (the original versions) still MIB. Mother Dearest tossed them in the garbage “since you never played with them anyway”.
I guess moms think that when their boys go into the military all of the sudden they have no use for childhood things.
When I came home after 4 years in the service I asked mom where were my little league trophies and baseball cards were. She tossed them.
It’s okay mom, I didn’t like those memories anyway. :mad:
Mom’s are terrible and seem to end up scarring their children for life, kids don’t trust your moms with your stuff!
Mine threw out a lot of my toys when I was around 9 because I hadn’t cleaned my room. I was still playing with them! Many of them were wishniks aka troll dolls that many years later had some value (not enough to fund my retirement though). She tried to assuage her guilt when I reached adulthood by buying me more troll dolls when they made a comeback, but they weren’t originals and it wasn’t the same thing.
How old are you guys? My parents were fine with keeping mine and my brother’s crap at their house while we were still in college (if asked, they would hold onto a few things that we didn’t yet have room for, but were still important to us.) How long are your parents supposed to store your stuff for you and even move it with them, in some cases? Holy crap! If it’s that important, keep it yourself. Even if your parents don’t mind, there’s always the chance of pests, water damage, a variety of other things can harm precious possessions stored away in someone’s attic or basement. I just don’t get grown children complaining about how their parents threw away/got rid of their baseball cards/Star Wars figures or whatever if it’s been sitting around in THE PARENTS’ home taking up space for however many years.
I can’t speak for these posters, but deployed young people often don’t have another home and go from their parents’ home (where all of their worldly goods remained) to their deployment.
My husband’s parents threw out many of his action figures, comic books, and similar goods while he was still living there, in his childhood and high school years. It’s not like they were scattered around the house or taking up room in the basement, either; they were items he kept in his room and enjoyed having.