What possession of yours have you held onto the longest?

The oldest thing would also be a blanket I’ve had since I was a baby. I’ve had it forever and it brings back happy memories from my childhood.

My umbilical cord. I had it gold-plated and currently wear it as a charm and talisman to ward of ill sentiment and general wickedness.

a white nappy monkey named silky. my brother won it for me out of a claw machine at an amusement park when he was like 10 and i was 3. i loved monkeys. i loved silky. i still love silky. i’m moving across the country thursday and i just packed him, actually. i had to take a moment and sniffle before i could continue.

I, too, have a special blanket. It has the Disney babies on it and I still have it. When I was little, I used to take it with me everywhere, on car rides, outside, etc. And then I would sleep with it. I called it my “puff”.

But the one object that I’ve held onto even longer and would die if anything happened to it would have to be my favorite stuffed cat. She’s beat up, she’s been sewn a million times, but there’s no other stuffed cat like her. I would never get rid of her and I intend to keep her forever. :)

i still have blankey too… sleep with it every night, too attached to even put away.

awww we’re all so cute with our baby stuffed animals and blankies lol

Fluther sleepover. Everyone bring your blankie and stuffed animal!

When I was younger, my Dad took me on a camping trip, just me and him. It was the first time he taught me about fishing, camping, and the outdoors. On the trip, he gave me an old compass that had been given to him by his father, and his father before that. He taught me how to use it, and I couldn’t put it down for a few weeks after that, I proceeded to plot my own course through our entire neighborhood. It’s a memory that’s ingrained in me forever, and I it’s one of my most prized possessions.

WTF ma and pa? I didn’t get a baby blanket!

A Puffalump. The yellow kitty one. Yeah, it’s stuffed in a box somewhere at my Pop’s. It has a bit of chocolate smeared on it and a bit of wear-age because we used to play volleyball with her. Yes, she’s a girl and her name is “Sweet Pea”. Got a problem with that? :)

I have my Dad’s pocket watch and cufflinks and my old teddy bear and little toddler housecoat that my daughters wore too.

Sadly, when I moved from the Bronx, my landlord threw away all my personal belongings. I told him I’d return in three days to pick up the rest of the stuff, but he just dumped it all out. I returned to an empty house.

we tried the legal route. it’s been years, I’m over it

I don’t have many personal possessions, hand-me-downs, pictures, blankies, or anything of the sort. I do have one, however:

When I was a toddler, my aunt bought me a plastic, toy guitar. I used to have a video of me playing it around her apartment like I was a rockstar, or something (video was lost, too, sadly). Years after she passed away, I picked up real guitar.

I named my first guitar I bought with my own money her. I’ve had “Tammy” for 7–8 years now. Probably the only item that has any sort of sentimental value.

@faye Don’t you love sharing with your children this way.

@Grisaille Would love to hear you play some time. :)

I named my first guitar I bought with my own money after her.

Damn typos.

@jonsblond I’ll bring Tammy with me to the Fluther sleepover.

I also have a blankie :)
My dad got it for me when I was about 4 or 5. It is black, with red and green squares and it has white puppies with a bow on it. It also smells like a smell I would recognize anywhere; it smells like me. I sleep with it everyday, some people want me to get rid of it because it looses alot of lint and when someone comes and lays on my bed they stand up with little black lint pieces on they’re clothes and they get mad. But I don’t care, it’s mine not theirs and nobody is going to get rid of it! >>shakes fist<<

@Tink1113

haha…I definitely know the whole “smell” thing. My cat and blanket both have a very distinct special “me” smell. I would never wash either one. :) My cat would come apart if I tried to wash her, anyway.

I don’t have a blankie, but I do have a pillowcase – no pillow, just the case. My grandmother gave it to me (with a pillow at the time), when I got my first big girl bed. After so many years the pillow is gone and I kept the pillowcase.

In this state, either my back pack or my rubber duck. I think I got them both in the 8th grade. And I don’t plan on getting rid of either.

@DominicX I can’t stand not washing things, so it gets washed every two weeks. But the smell always comes back. :)

I don’t know if it is the longest, but I have a manicure set that was a gift when I was in 6th grade. I have grandchildren now.

I have my blankey too. I also have my first baby doll (poor ol’ thing).

Because I am an artist, every single piece of art work I have done since I could lift a pencil :)

I still have a couple of books that I adored when I was about 2 or 3. When I was in my 20s my mother gave them to me to keep.

I was born before Eisenhower was elected.

My stuffed bear, Fatso. I’ve had him since I was five and he’s been through everything with me, from road trips to operations.

@DrasticDreamer Fatso LOL

I don’t have anything left from childhood but I have an earring made from the diamond in my mom’s engagement ring. I had it made after she died in 81 and I have worn it ever since. I love it.

GQ by the way, you always come up with good ones @jonsblond !!!

For my 2nd birthday my dad bought me a Pound Puppy (stuffed animal – 80’s fad toy). He was fat and covered in brown hair… But after being passed down from me to my brother, then a younger brother, now my daughter, he’s skinny and totally bald. He looks about 70 in dog years lol =) ...I also have a Madeline doll I got for Christmas when I was 4. I named my daughter after her.

I don’t really have anything from childhood. Both my sister and I were given teddies when we were babies, she still has hers and I am jealous of it.
Most of our family photos and things were destroyed in a house fire we had when I was young.
When my Dad passed away I was given a pair of his cufflinks by my Step-mom, I have worn them a few times but rarely wear a shirt with the holes for them, I do treasure them though. I also have a candlestick that was turned from a piece of brass from the Ark Royal when it was decommisioned in 1978, my Dad was a Petty Officer in the Navy and served on board from 1975 to 1977. This has price of place on my mantlepiece. It was a pair, My sister has the other.

I have created a sort of time capsule for my grand-daughters now, filled with pictures, “things” and memories for them to look through when they are older. I wish someone had done this for me.

I have a stuffed bear named Ted that I’ve had since I was about 2. My grandma tells a really cute story about how I saw him at the store and said “I’m getting this!” I took him off the shelf and carried him around. He was very expensive, about $15 which I guess was a whole lot for a teddy bear in 1977. She bought him anyway because I wanted him so badly. I took him everywhere with me for years. Later I just slept with him. He still sits on my bed everyday and rests in a chair at night.

My Charlie Chimp monkey and my tooth fairy pillow. I also have some of the letters I recieved from the tooth fairy!

please don’t start a debate on whether or not we should tell lies to our children, I enjoyed writing to her when I was little and it didn’t pschologically scar me that fact that my motehr encouraged it, it only stretched my imagination so it knows no bounderies to loosing myself in thought!

I have two things. One is a book that I was given as a newborn. “Are You My Mother?” Which, as I think about it, might not be the best book title for a kid!

The other is my bear. He is white with red paws and ears. When his music box died from overwinding, my mom cut him open and took it out. A couple of years later, I held him very close to my face and one of his plastic eyes scratched my eyelid. My mom promptly removed his plastic eyes and sewed on yarn ones. While he looks a bit like Frankenbear, I still love him!

The oldest item I have is a pair of Sperry Topsiders™ I purchased from a thrift store in Milwaukee when I was 15. That was 25 years ago. I had to replace the laces last year, but other than that, a better pair of deck shoes I’ve never seen or worn. I looked at a pair when I was at a store recently, and they weren’t made in the same way.

I left most sentimental items with my mom when I moved across the country. She currently has a small stuffed rabbit named baby wobbley that I have had since I was born.

The oldest item I have with me would be some coins my dad gave me before
he died.

I don’t own any of my really old childhood stuff – it’s my parents’ now, to keep or toss as they will. I might be more possessive about those things, though, were they not already inclined to keep almost all of it.

My oldest personal possession is a bubbler, bought 9 years ago at a Phish parking lot. It looks like a gorgeous sparkly swizzle stick in Broncos colors, the blue a dichro swirl around a tiny line that looks like DNA, and the background comes in first yellow, then orange and red. Never seen anything like it before or since. I love buying pipes at lots because you get to bargain – I got the seller down from $80 to $60 by going all out with the haggling. I even started walking away, and he called me back with the offer! It was such a successfully pulled off cliche we laughed about it together as I paid him.

Or, if we can count pets, I’m currently living with a cat I’ve had for 13 years. She’s been with me through some rough times. It’s really gonna suck when I lose her; I get all teary at even the thought of her death.

@all You guys are so cute. Now I’m curious about whether most people keep their blankets or stuffed animals.

@tedibear39 That book is awesome!

My great-great grandmorther’s Shabbat candlesticks that came from Russia. My Mom was not a keeper of anything and I have very few family heirlooms. I had always wanted the Shabbat candelsticks because of that and she gave them to me when she moved into a retirement home several years ago.

I had a gold ring with a blue Star sapphire.
It was the first thing I bought with the money a earned on my first job.
It was nothing fancy but it was like a right of passage.
I was around 16 when I got it. I am 45.

Then a year ago my ex girlfriend took it. Knowing how much that meant to me.

I have learned to never put value and importance on material things.

@ChazMaz hoe :(

I have a cute, funny little gorilla with a plush body and a plastic face. He wears a wrestling suit that says “Rodney needs love.” I’ve had it since I was born. I love him.

A baby curl my mother gave me. Man, that’s one old piece of hair!

On second thought, I have something even older than that. My original birth certificate! Man, that’s REALLY old.

I have a stuffed animal that was given to me when I was 3. It has now been passed onto my boys (who will likely tear it to pieces.. XD)

I have a wool dress that my grandparents bought my mother when she was a child and her family lived in Paris. I wore it a couple of times as a child, but it was so itchy I never left it on long. I also have the very first thing I ever bought with my own money. He is a homemade stuffed panda bear I named Ted Edward Bear. The most sentimental things I own are three dresses my mother sewed for me when I was around 7.

Two original Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls from the early 1940’s, a blond ringlet from my daughter’s first hair cut in 1968, a yellowed photo of my great-grandfather from the turn-of- the-century (19th), my son’s first shoes from 1961 (bronzed and used as bookends).

My family never throws anything out. I still have my first, second and third stuffed animals (a strange floppy dog, a panda bear, and “The Camel With the Wrinkled Knees”), as well as the sterling brush and comb set and small gold cross that were given to my mother for me before I was born.

The oldest possession I have (other than a brass monkey from Japan that is several hundred years old, a gift from my MIL) is a candelabra that was given in payment to my grandfather during the Depression. My mom long thought it was a menorah, but eventually we found the card that went with it. It is a Russian Orthodox church piece dating to the 17th century and not Jewish at all.

The second oldest possession I have is the diamond that represented one half of my great grandmother’s retirement investment, purchase in the 1890’s. When my grandmother lost her wedding ring in the Christmas cookie dough and it never turned up, g-g-ma had it set in a ring and gave it to her. When her hands got too arthritic to wear rings she gave it to my mother. When her hands got too arthritic, my mother gave it to me, and I wear it constantly as a replacement for my original engagement ring that disappeared several years ago.

I also have my great great grandmother’s love seat, upholstered in the original yellow silk. But no one is allowed to sit on it at least until after my parents die.

I just thought of some other, longer-lived possessions: my Buffet clarinets. I’ve had the B-flat for 14 years, and the A for 12. They mean more to me than any other possession, I think, both because of their sentimental value and because I love their sound. Their sound is my sound; I can’t even imagine making music on other clarinets. I even had my B-flat pinned back together by a master clarinet-maker when it cracked as a result of the move from Colorado to Philly (rather than buy a new one, which is the route most players take). But the A is the truly special one – it’s an older instrument, still set up in the fashion they used to use for As, with the keys stretched out a bit to fit the slightly longer bole – not like they make the As now, with the keyholes spaced the same as on the B-flats. It actually makes a big difference in the feel of the instrument.

i have a blanket or two from when i was a baby that are in a blanket chest. in fact i am going to ask a question later about whether or not the acidity of wood inside a blanket chest will discolor the contents. anyway, i also have a rag doll that my mother bought for one of my friends when i was little and i wanted it so my mother let me keep it (i was a little spoiled). doll’s name is Alice, and she has a red flannel dress and blonde yarn hair. her head is a little floppy. she is in a shoebox which i refer to as her coffin. i am also a big saver so i have a lot of stuff from when i grew up. i have some baby teeth. i have greeting cards that i got when i was little. i call this the “hoarding gene.”

I have a pair of levi’s for a baby, and a mickey mouse club t-shirt I wore in 1956. It is tradition for any new baby in the family to have their picture taken wearing them.
I have a blanket, also, with cowboys on it.
I have an autographed picture from Captain Satellite, a local TV host of a cartoon show.

I’ve kept a copy of Norton’s Guide to Literature for an extremely long time because it belonged to my college girlfriend who wrote a note in the front cover telling me how much she loved me.

my insanity.