Nicole's post about how her teacups fell off the wall and smashed, and how she cried for four hours over it, inspired this. Have you ever had a treasured object of any kind made permanently unavailable to you? Stolen, destroyed, sold without your knowledge, etc?
This was more common when I was young. When I was a baby my parents bought a big green car to haul themselves, me, and all the stuff they needed to bring with me, around town. I literally could not remember life without that car. When I was 12 the engine head cracked, and the car sat for a year, and then my dad sold it. I was really upset, and my parents couldn't understand why I was so upset over a car. This was in the late 1980s before anybody knew anything about autism.
When I was a freshman in high school the high school gym was old and had really tiny lockers, lockers so tiny the only thing that would fit in them were our street clothes. We had to leave our backpacks on the floor. When the swimming unit of PE rolled around, I had to take off my treasured watch and leave it in my backpack. It was one of those touch screen calculator watches that were popular then, and was fairly expensive.
One day while we were out at the pool, we came back and ALL of our backpacks had been rifled through and EVERYTHING of ANY value AT ALL was gone. Including my watch. The thieves had even ripped off the rubber cladding on our combination locks! (At the time, Master Lock sold a lock that came in several different colors, with a colored dial and colored rubber around the lock, to the teenage set.) I was devastated because my watch was gone, and everybody was just "get over it jerk, it's just a watch".
Sometimes I wonder if the head of the athletic department, who was a cranky old galoot who remembered when dirt was young, had arranged the theft to teach us a lesson.
When my parents sold my childhood home in 2005, I was inwardly much more upset than I let on outside. I kept having dreams about the house. They had bought the house when my mom was pregnant, literally my very first experiences of a home were when I was a few days old and was discharged from the hospital after being born. Even when I moved out I always had the option of visiting. Now I couldn't do that and deep down somewhere I was really upset. I kept driving past the house for a while. Eventually I came to accept it.
This was more common when I was young. When I was a baby my parents bought a big green car to haul themselves, me, and all the stuff they needed to bring with me, around town. I literally could not remember life without that car. When I was 12 the engine head cracked, and the car sat for a year, and then my dad sold it. I was really upset, and my parents couldn't understand why I was so upset over a car. This was in the late 1980s before anybody knew anything about autism.
When I was a freshman in high school the high school gym was old and had really tiny lockers, lockers so tiny the only thing that would fit in them were our street clothes. We had to leave our backpacks on the floor. When the swimming unit of PE rolled around, I had to take off my treasured watch and leave it in my backpack. It was one of those touch screen calculator watches that were popular then, and was fairly expensive.
One day while we were out at the pool, we came back and ALL of our backpacks had been rifled through and EVERYTHING of ANY value AT ALL was gone. Including my watch. The thieves had even ripped off the rubber cladding on our combination locks! (At the time, Master Lock sold a lock that came in several different colors, with a colored dial and colored rubber around the lock, to the teenage set.) I was devastated because my watch was gone, and everybody was just "get over it jerk, it's just a watch".
Sometimes I wonder if the head of the athletic department, who was a cranky old galoot who remembered when dirt was young, had arranged the theft to teach us a lesson.
When my parents sold my childhood home in 2005, I was inwardly much more upset than I let on outside. I kept having dreams about the house. They had bought the house when my mom was pregnant, literally my very first experiences of a home were when I was a few days old and was discharged from the hospital after being born. Even when I moved out I always had the option of visiting. Now I couldn't do that and deep down somewhere I was really upset. I kept driving past the house for a while. Eventually I came to accept it.
