I have a hard time letting things go. Some things. Sometimes.
Okay, a lot.
So, to set the stage, let me take you back in time to an era when we all wore legwarmers. When Michael Jackson still looked sort of like a man. When neon colors and Madonna-style net fingerless gloves were all the rage.
Yes, yes, the Eighties.
I entered high school in 1988. By this time, I had amassed quite a collection of various trophies, ribbons, plaques, and commendation certificates from my myriad activities of a hyper youth. I showed horses, I ran track, I played soccer, and I even won a spelling bee. I got an honorable mention for stellar performance in a mock trial competition (my team totally lost, but I maintain that it wasn't my fault at all).
By the time I graduated from high school, my collection had increased exponentially to include my honor roll time, my cheerleading, my FFA activities, and my student journalism sojourn.
Hubby was not so active in school. We were pretty much polar opposites as I ran around campus in my sweater and jean combinations and he sported the ever popular "Metallica" shirt and teased people about wearing the band's t-shirt to that band's concert.
We did both have long, luxurious hair, though.
Anyway, fast forward to the nineties, our first away from home duty assignment was in New Hampshire. We rented the cutest little restored house - it had been built before the 1860s and remodeled into a duplex. It had a huge attic and a basement.
The attic was particularly interesting as it had been the maid quarters until rules about work restrictions and illegal immigrants and cheap labor had so unobligingly been enacted, thus ending the halcyon days of the moneyed owners of the house.
We used the attic for storage. My trophies were up there, and my husband's books.
Upon moving from New Hampshire to San Angelo, Texas, my husband was tasked with the job of taking all our stuff out of the attic and moving it into the dining room; as we all know that movers have a deathly fear of attic and basements and will not enter them without holy water and a crucifix, and a 300$ up charge (in untraceable cash) on the bill.
Hubby's books made it to San Angelo just fine. I should know, I unpacked them.
What I never found were my trophies. And there was a reason I never found them. Hubby had forgotten to bring them downstairs after he took a break from lugging approximately 14 boxes of heavy books downstairs and taking a coke break.
So, I lost my trophies forever. But I knew my day would come.
So now I'm cleaning out my MIL's house as we get her ready and situated for her stay in a nursing facility.
And I come across hubby's school mementos.
I'll let you figure out the rest.
