09-28-2016, 11:06 AM
This has been a constant theme in my life, actually. I was probably a bit too materialistic in the last one. This one I was taught at a very young age to not be!
When I was a little girl, I had a collection of Precious Moments (little porcelain figurines) that my grandmother had mostly bought me. They were mostly decorating my room on little shelves on the walls and the top of my large dresser. My mother used to have fits and slam doors repeatedly a lot, which would knock the shelves off the walls and smash the figurines. My sister wanted them for herself (she had her own collection - unicorns! way cooler) and would climb up the front of my dresser to try to get to them. She rarely did - usually by the time her weight got towards the top, the dresser would topple down on top of her. This happened several times. Of course, everything on the top of the dresser toppled as well. I still have a box with some of my Precious Moments in it, most of them pieced back together with super glue.
When I was around 18-19, I was a modern girl. I had ideals of impermanency and moving around and had one true love - music. I spent most of my time going to see bands play at venues several times a week. I collected music. I kept my music collection converted into mp3s - instead of lugging around bulky CDs of course. I had a laptop and a large iPod, so I was sure that I had everything backed up. All of my hard copies of CDs had been resold or given away. A few weeks before Christmas while I was out at a bar, someone broke into my car. They stole my laptop AND my iPod. ALL of my music that I had been collecting actively for years, as well as all of my old photo files from up until that point. To add insult to injury, the thieves also stole my Gameboy, which was in a case that had my original Pokemon red/blue cartridges (sob), half a pack of cigarettes, and as I discovered a couple days later at my next shift at my job, the apron I wore waitressing (probably had about $4 in change in it). This was 10-11 years ago now and I'm not sure I'll ever fully recover from this loss.
Around this same time as well, I had been living on and off in Minneapolis (4 hours from Des Moines), and my then-boyfriend had promised 1,000 times to me that if I moved up there to be with him, that if things didn't work out, he would help me move all my stuff back, no questions asked, no problems (I moved it all up there myself in his SUV). Well, sadly, this man fell in love with someone else and cheated on me, so I literally just got pushed aside and basically told not to come back after one of my trips to visit back home. A few months later, he told me that he had a bunch of my stuff in the basement that was going to get thrown away because they were remodeling, so send him my new address and he will ship it to me. Sent the address. Never heard from him again. Mostly sentimental stuff, basically everything I had acquired or been given as a gift on my trip to Japan. I try not to think about the stuff in those boxes too much!!!
Anyway, as of this summer, I've had a couple of people take advantage of my kindness, one couple to the tune of over $100 (I mentioned this in passing I think shortly after it happened). $100 is and isn't a lot of money, so the sting is there but it's easy to put away most of the time. I think I was more bothered in that situation with the way that I was treated when I asked for it returned (threatened with a gun in my face).
When I was a little girl, I had a collection of Precious Moments (little porcelain figurines) that my grandmother had mostly bought me. They were mostly decorating my room on little shelves on the walls and the top of my large dresser. My mother used to have fits and slam doors repeatedly a lot, which would knock the shelves off the walls and smash the figurines. My sister wanted them for herself (she had her own collection - unicorns! way cooler) and would climb up the front of my dresser to try to get to them. She rarely did - usually by the time her weight got towards the top, the dresser would topple down on top of her. This happened several times. Of course, everything on the top of the dresser toppled as well. I still have a box with some of my Precious Moments in it, most of them pieced back together with super glue.
When I was around 18-19, I was a modern girl. I had ideals of impermanency and moving around and had one true love - music. I spent most of my time going to see bands play at venues several times a week. I collected music. I kept my music collection converted into mp3s - instead of lugging around bulky CDs of course. I had a laptop and a large iPod, so I was sure that I had everything backed up. All of my hard copies of CDs had been resold or given away. A few weeks before Christmas while I was out at a bar, someone broke into my car. They stole my laptop AND my iPod. ALL of my music that I had been collecting actively for years, as well as all of my old photo files from up until that point. To add insult to injury, the thieves also stole my Gameboy, which was in a case that had my original Pokemon red/blue cartridges (sob), half a pack of cigarettes, and as I discovered a couple days later at my next shift at my job, the apron I wore waitressing (probably had about $4 in change in it). This was 10-11 years ago now and I'm not sure I'll ever fully recover from this loss.
Around this same time as well, I had been living on and off in Minneapolis (4 hours from Des Moines), and my then-boyfriend had promised 1,000 times to me that if I moved up there to be with him, that if things didn't work out, he would help me move all my stuff back, no questions asked, no problems (I moved it all up there myself in his SUV). Well, sadly, this man fell in love with someone else and cheated on me, so I literally just got pushed aside and basically told not to come back after one of my trips to visit back home. A few months later, he told me that he had a bunch of my stuff in the basement that was going to get thrown away because they were remodeling, so send him my new address and he will ship it to me. Sent the address. Never heard from him again. Mostly sentimental stuff, basically everything I had acquired or been given as a gift on my trip to Japan. I try not to think about the stuff in those boxes too much!!!
Anyway, as of this summer, I've had a couple of people take advantage of my kindness, one couple to the tune of over $100 (I mentioned this in passing I think shortly after it happened). $100 is and isn't a lot of money, so the sting is there but it's easy to put away most of the time. I think I was more bothered in that situation with the way that I was treated when I asked for it returned (threatened with a gun in my face).
![[+]](https://www.bring4th.org/forums/images/collapse_collapsed.png)