My white-rust-red jade bangle that I accidentally broke when my arm banged into my wardrobe door.

My green jade pendant that broke when the clasp came loose.

My art portfolio that I stupidly junked when I decided I wasn't going to do art seriously.

Oh man, the art portfolio must HURT.

Items of regret for me are crystal clear. A stunning huge antique wardrobe that was far too big for me to keep anywhere when I was in my twenties and who's sale price was too tempting at that age too. Huge tragedy. A pink coat I should have purchased in Paris. Some stuffed toys from our Vienna house, mostly rabbits - I had a thing for them. A beautiful gold bracelet all of my friends purchased for me for my 21st birthday which tragically fell off while walking around Avignon. Oh, and an apartment I rented in Sydney.

Oh man, if I started on items I didn't PURCHASE when I could have, we'd be here all night.

The paperback of "The Princess Bride", which I loaned to Dave Baker in high school because I had a crush on him. He loaned it to his friend Dave Johnson, who I never would have loaned a book to because I thought he was a jerk. I don't know where it went after that but I never got it back.

A series of four poems that I wrote in college about the seasons. I am not much of a poet, but I worked hard on them and I wish I still had them. I accidentally trashed them and the notebook they were in when I moved out of my dorm room that year.

4 pictures of my dad as a child. I have copies in a frame together, but I lost the originals. I feel really bad about that.

One coppery colored upside-down-teardrop shaped earring. Lost it while walking to class in college. Kept the other one for YEARS hoping the lost one would show up.

My friend Serena's copy of some hard back book of Arthurian legend about Merlin. I left it in a Saturn dealership in 1996.

oh, and The Far Pavillions which I loaned out to someone(I forget who) and it never came back for several years, and suddenly someone chucked it in my mailbox - half the book was gone. Why bother to return it, right? It was the front half of the book with my name on it. I still have the half-book - as a reminder NEVER to loan out any of my books again. I swear the book was ripped in half right down the spine. *cringe*

How completely bizarre. I love that book, have read it several times, and just received the movie from my sister for Christmas and let me tell you, it is ONE HORRENDOUS TRAINWRECK OF AWFUL ACTING. :D

I lost a tiny plastic bear on our large gravel driveway. I searched for years for it.

I lost a red and white scarf - probably the best gift my brother ever gave me. I was in high school and he was in college and it was his college's scraf. I was so proud. While out with some friends a guy "borrowed it" and never gave it back.

I lost my red converse hi-cuts - they were not in good shape and were a few years old. But it was 1983 and no one else had anything like them, and I had searched all over Toronto to find them - I wanted to be just like the guy on the Clash album cover. I years later suspected that my mom threw them out but she denied any memory of such a thing.

My husband lost a greyhound bus hotwheel in the lake at the cottage. He still looks for it every time we go there.

A Jade/silver ring I made that fell under the dresser in Germany- and months later when I finally got the dresser moved- it was GONE!!!!
and a couple rings that your Dad gave me that fell out of my pocket (at different times, think I should have learned better the first time!.
Love, Lizardmom

Should have checked the vacuum bags or God forbid did we have mice??? OH OH or maybe the cat took it!! Yeah that's it the cat took it!
(actually I have no idea what ring you are talking about!)
I did the same with an amethyst necklace in Va Rachel dropped it and I saw it go and when I finally moved the dresser it to was gone!
Seester

My Holly Hobby doll. I loved her. I'm sure I tossed her when I thought I was old enough to be over dolls, but now I wish I still had her.

Also my teddy bear. It was one that used to be my grandpas and it was thread bare after years of having been loved on. I seriously do not know what happened to it, just one day it was gone and has never been seen since. I miss him.

A black linen blazer that I loaned a friend. She crashed her car that night after stupidly driving drunk and the paramedics CUT my jacket off of her. I was so mad at her!

A gold and diamond earring. It was the first diamond earrings I'd ever had and they were so pretty. Maggie ate one and we never...recovered it. :/

Jewelry seems to be a recurring theme here. I've lost a little dove pendant that was my mom's when she was a teenager. I still look for it. (She later eschewed all jewelry except a cross necklace and her wedding band.) It's a reminder that my mom wasn't always the person that she is now.

I lost a friend due to $1000 bill she ran up on my credit card. Many times I've thought that it would so be worth the $1000 to be friends with her again.

I lost track of my childhood (ages 8-13) crush. His parents lost track of him too. Nobody knows what happened to him.

I've noticed the jewelry theme, too. I had no idea that the space behind dressers was such a black hole.

How awful about your childhood crush, that even his parents don't know where he is. We have a cousin sort of like that. She disappeared a few years ago, and her husband and children don't even know what happened to her.

This was such an interesting post... of course it made me and everyone else slip down memory lane. Let's see... I want to write more on this one (perhaps the topic of tomorrow's morning pages) but at first blush: the little blue flowered doll's china tea set I had when I was eight, my stuffed pig Rosebud (my mom made her--an xmas present when I was four and entirely too obsessed with pigs), an exquisite abalone shell necklace that a friend of the family had made for me using the shell of an abalone my dad and I found, my red kilt skirt that I wore in second grade... Oh Liz, I loved this post. I was nodding over every one of your lost items, remembeing similar items. Oh sticker collections! Oh lovely little self-illustrated stories... The ephemera of childhood. But,like me, I see you've hung on to your journals--which are priceless!

I know people who have thrown away their scrapbooks and journals and mourned them forever after. I'm always horrified when someone says they're contemplating ditching that kind of stuff. I'm sure my children, one day, will be like "geez, didn't she ever throw ANYTHING away??" which is sort of how I felt about my dad, but with him it wasn't memories and journals, it was, oh...telephone books and moldy maps and boxes and boxes of computer cables. :P

Because I could probably use up a sizeable portion of bandwidth on this one!
The ones that hurt the most? My grandmother's ring and the ring & bracelet my mom gave to me for my 21st & 18th birthdays, respectively, along with my jewelry box & the rest of its contents, when my first house was broken into. My small, but treasured, collection of vintage postcards was in that jewelry box, too. My complete collection of CCR albums, also ripped off.
Hardback (& I believe, original!) editions of Thorne Smith short stories & his Topper book (actually my mom's), that I carelessly loaned to a guy who I can only remember now as Mike, who I never saw again after I gave him a ride home, with the books, the day before graduation (wtf was I thinking??)...My Mr. Ed talking horse puppet - that I took such good care of, that I, lovingly, REPLACED IT IN ITS BOX after each time I played with it, & my grandmother decided that since it was in its box, that I really never played with it & gave it to my cousins, who ripped out his pullstring & cut his mane the first day they had it!!! My little stuffed giraffe, George, who mysteriously disappeared from my room after cousins visited...OK, I'm not sure if I should dwell on this theme anymore, or our next family get-together may end badly!

How awful about your Mr. Ed doll, and the stuff that was stolen!! :( I still wish I had the wallet that was stolen out of my purse one day at lunch. It was the perfect wallet. I don't have the Thorne Smith short stories, but I have paperback copies of all of his novels. I've loved his books since I was 13.

What have you lost that you wish you could recover?

childish playfulness, teeth and friends

silly boo. you know what I meant. :)

Two items come to mind. The first being my charm bracelet that was stolen. The beautiful chuncky gold bracelet was bought for me by my family as a birthday gift. Then every year for Christmas and birthdays I was given charms by my friends or for special occasions. Every link had been filled in when it was stolen.
The second is a ring my mom gave me, it fell behind my dresser and has never been found again. (I still haven´t told my mom, I feel so guilty).

Liz, I started an essay on this very topic (I think it's really interesting) about two years ago and then I moved to Sweden and it was left on a friend's laptop, which she no longer has. So all my ruminations about lost things were also lost.

The three most important things I've lost:

-My Lemon Meringue doll (a friend of Strawberry Shortcake) who disappeared without a trace
-A cameo charm I bought in Sienna
-The PERFECT black skirt

-Amylou

You just reminded me of the perfect little black dress that I loaned to a friend to wear to a wedding back in Chicago and which was never returned. Even though I couldn't fit into it now, I wish I had it back!

oh, and this

Mostly things I gave away STUPIDLY like my entire Nancy Drew collection which was AWESOME with some originals mixed in-- my mom convinced me to give it to my cousin who a) never read it and b)I never saw it again-- gone gone gone. I also lent a fabulous book that haunts me to my freind Tara and never saw it again--- (I've searched her bookcases-- it is gone gone gone). Not an easy one to replace-- I have tried, can't quite remember the title-- but the story is vivid. But right now-- I have so much stuff I can't believe it and know without at doubt my next house, should we ever move, will be a hut, with three hooks, one for my flipflops, one for my pareo and one for the fishing line and THAT IS IT. ~bluepoppy

You'll never move again, you can't fool me. :)

What was the story of the book you lent to Tara? There's a website I linked to not too long ago that you can post such things on and people will help figure out what book it was, if you're interested.