Have you seen my pink blanket?

Have you ever been really upset that you have lost one of your personal belongings? Like, so upset you really never forget about how you wish you had it, or you wonder what the hell happened to it? You know that it's been about fifteen years, but you still catch yourself wondering what you could have possibly done with it? There are a lot of things, meaningful and symbolic as well as insignificant and unimportant. Let's see what I remember losing.

1. Toby the teddy bear when I was about 4. It was my mothers teddy bear when she was little, and I didn't understand the sentimentality of it at the time, and I gave it to the little girl that lived next door that perpetually wet the bed. Good thing my parents thought I was too young for sleepovers, right? I never forgot about Toby, even though I don't even remember what he looked like. After about a year, as well as seeing how bummed my mom was when she asked where Toby was and I told her that Missy had it, I understood that I shouldn't have given it away. I think this was my first feeling of regret, and I was too shy to ask for it back. I stopped seeing her one day, and my father told me she had moved to Northern Maine. I have no idea where she is, or if she even has Toby still, but even if I were to find him, she probably urinated all over him.
   
2. My purple Fred Flintstone eraser that I got out of a box of Fruity Pebbles when I was seven. Why do I remember this? Because I spent HOURS thinking and dwelling about it. My family was moving from a terrible neighborhood and I was to pack up my toys. I remember packing everything and knowing exactly where everything was, except my Fred Flintstone eraser. I remember the eraser kind of sucked, especially trying to erase with his foot, because it just bent and didn't erase anything. His face was all gray from erasing so much and subsequently covered in lead. Once all of my toys were packed, my mom swept the floor and told me to look in the pile which consisted mostly of buttons, pennies and Barbies mismatched shoes to see if there was anything in there I wanted still. I thought for sure that I would find my eraser in there, but to no avail. I remember asking what I was going to do about a new eraser and threw a bit of a temper tantrum because they didn't give Fred Flintstone erasers in the box of fruity pebbles anymore, that was like, months ago. It was practically antique to me.
   
3. My artifacts when I was about ten. When I first moved to the New House, I had little to no friends. All I wanted to do was become an archeologist and find dinosaur eggs and fossils. I filled a back pack with notebooks, a plastic magnifying glass, a shovel separated from it's identical beach pale, plastic bags, a box of yoohoo and a few pouches of Shark Bites to provide myself with the energy to carry on with my daily excursions. I would dig EVERYWHERE. I probably stressed my parents out by digging up the yard so often, but hey, I found some interesting things. Back in the olden days, my town was filled with Witches, and was actually the site for many hangings and graveyards. Almost all of the houses in my area of town were actually very old, so when I found so many interesting things buried, it wasn't much of a surprise. One of the first things I found was a sterling silver butter knife with a bunch of initials carved into the handle. I later found out were the initials of the children of the owner of the knife. I found memorial spoons and pieces of fancy dinner ware all throughout the yard. I thought it was so cool that most of these were from the late 1800's, but a few were as old as the late 1700's. That sound cool to you? Those weren't even my best finds. The coolest thing I had ever found was 90% of a gun from the 1800's. I found the wooden handle and the barrel. There was with a metal piece on the handle that after cleaning it, I found that it was from 1863 if I remember correctly. My father didn't want me to keep those things in my room for obvious reasons, and one day when I was older and inquired about them, I found out they were gone. I am still very upset about this, because now that the internet is so totally awesome, if I had these items in front of me, I could probably find out a lot more about them than I could have years ago. Or, at least, bring them to Antiques Roadshow.
   
4. Most depressing of them all, my baby blankets when I was about twenty. I thought I had them, but I must have lost them when I was constantly moving around. I would give anything for someone to randomly facebook me with "Hey, did you lose a tiny tiny pink blanket and a panda bear blanket?" My Grandmother on my fathers side who passed away years and years ago had knitted the pink blanket and my Grandmother on my mothers side had knitted the panda blanket. I remember when I was three or four I tried to cut the pink blanket because I wanted just a long piece of string, I thought it would be way cooler than a blanket because I could turn that string into a number of different things, mainly a leash for my cat. My mother caught me early into the cutting, so she was able to mend the blanket for me. I used to always keep them on my bed, or on the floor, never really cherishing them like I would have if I had known I might never see them again. I feel like I took the sentiment for granted, and now that I don't see my family as often, and I wish I had them back. I really don't have much more to say about these, it's really upsetting when I think about it.
   
5. My cell phone from 2004 which had watered down internet, strictly monotone ringtones and a camera with approximately one pixel when I was 19ish. Okay, so I came to Boston to watch the Red Sox play in the world series and we actually won. I, in a drunken stupor, thought it was an absolutely brilliant idea to go watch people go nuts in the streets. I remember, the minute we won, we walked outside and you could hear a traveling crowd. We decided to follow. I wasn't sure where we were going, but as long as I followed the screams and roars, I'd make it there easily. People were trashing absolutely everything. I remember walking up and down the streets in awe, as newspapers flew through the air while intoxicated adrenaline freaks attacked absolutely everything in their paths. There were even small fires in the streets. I remember drunkenly ducking into the entry way of a storefront and sitting down for a minute. I don't really remember the trip back to the apartment we were staying at, but I know in the middle of the night, I realized I didn't have my phone. Once it was light out, I decided to take a walk through the streets, looking at all the store fronts in the path of destruction to see where I could have possibly ducked into. When I saw the comic book store, I knew we had a winner, but my cell phone was no where to be found.
   

Now I sleep every night with a cat and a man that I love very much under a blanket that his mom sent down for us, where sometimes I lay awake playing games on my touch screen phone. There's really no use for erasers anymore considering everything is done with computers [and if I were to manually write, it'd probably be with a pen anyway,] and instead of keeping obscene amounts of personal artifacts that I have collected over the years, I save my thoughts and photographs in the fashion of a blog. I guess I really didn't need the items that I lost, but it would be nice to have them, wouldn't it? Thinking about all of the things I once had, and the parts of my collection I have lost, I wonder if I am ever going to forget about them. Will I one day be 90 years old and wondering where my Fred Flintstone eraser is? Probably.