I don't get why I saved them.....

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I was recently discussing with my girlfriend the few things that I still have after all these years from my childhood.

Among them are a Goofy plush toy I got at Walt Disney World in '86 when I was 4, some other plush toys, these knight figurines I bought at a museum around the age of 10 or 11, some important key pictures from my trip to WDW, a picture book from my 5th birthday.....and a few Disney videotapes, and that's about it.


The weird thing is.....I don' know why I saved any of it. Granted, now as an adult I plan on keeping them for posterity, and much of it is already in my girlfriend's hands...but I don't fully get it.

Now, I admit many people from the toy community saved a lot of figures that meant loads to them as a kid. The weird thing with me was that not only once I was into a new show did I not care at all anymore about the previous toyline, but despite some characters that stood out to me....until I was a teenager and got back into the franchises, none of the characters individually meant enough to me that they were that incredibly special, so I'd hold onto them.

Many people in the community love these past franchises in waxing nostalgia over what they loved in their youth. For me, the nostalgia kick happened in my teens, and somewhat into my early '20s. After that, I found a new-found appreciation for them( i.e. I love them on a new level), and now I have favorites; for the most part, it's not so much about nostalgia anymore.

What were the patterns you folks had about keeping stuff from your youth? Did you keep stuff that meant a lot to you, or somehow did you just never get rid of it, or how'd that work?

I'm curious; I really do wonder here if we Autistic folk just view our stuff differently, even as children. I granted can't go back in time and ask myself, so maybe I could get some insight here.

I still have a wind up lamb toy that plays Twinkle Twinkle Little Star I've had since the day I was born. And it's on my bed with my current toys. Two toys are of characters I loved in my childhood: Sonic and Tales.

I wanted to keep all my toys for ages even when I was over them. They are memories to me and even though I stopped displaying them or playing with them they still feel special to me. Figures I have gotten rid of I dearly miss. I'm not likely to give up on my Doctor Who, Stargate and Star Trek figures any time soon.

Oh, I didn't want to throw my old toys away, don't get me wrong; my parents just made a rule that I considered a threat near worse than death: toss 'em, or no new toys.

Because of that, I now have a new rule for my stuff: you touch 'em without my permission, you die

I can relate. I have at least a hundred stuffed animal/plush toys from childhood that I just can't bear to part with.. I think it's because as a kid I had no friends and not many people were very nice to me. My mom often remarks that I would say that I didn't need friends becuase I had my stuffed animals. I remember feeling closer emotionaly to my plushies and my toys than I did my own family. Supposedly it shouldn't affect me becuase I was a baby and supposedly too young to remember, but I was bounced around from foster home to foster home until I was about nine months old. My parents say this shouldn't bother me becuase I was too young to remember it, but I think I may have some reactive attachment disorder in addition to autism. I don't want to get rid of my stuffed animals becuase it would be like throwing out a family member and often times my stuffed animals were nicer to me and more accepting than my own family.

Boy, can I relate to this - the part about stuffed animals being nicer than most people/family members, I mean.

I still have my collection of Disney Cars diecasts and all my plushies, too, especially the ones from my earliest years. Two of them were ones I got when I was a year old...there was a dog named "Brownie" who barked when you squeezed him, and there is actually a home video of me unwrapping him on my first birthday and smiling and waving my arms whenever he barked. His "barker" gave up the ghost not long afterward, but I still loved him.

The second one was a bean bag rabbit from Oriental Trading that I got for my first Easter...she had little pink love hearts on her hind feet, and plastic whiskers I loved to chew on. I think I named her "Lazy Mary ( I had some very unusual names for my plushies as a kid)."

I'm okay about going thru the stuffed animals that I don't really have any particular attachments to/memories with and giving them to, say, Kosair Charities or other places...certain organizations give stuffed animals to young kids who have witnessed accidents, have lost their homes, or are in hospitals, and it makes me happy knowing that a little kid who needs a stuffed animal who might not otherwise get one will receive one from a charity. However, I have hung onto all the plushies that I played with when I was young, and the ones that have sentimental value for me.

My mom would do this thing where she would take a black trash bag up to my room and sort of "conscript" me into choosing which stuffed animals I wanted to give up...she said they would go to children in need, but I'm not sure I believed that...and one of the ones she sent away was this hand puppet of Quasimodo from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I really loved Quasimodo, but when my mom made her mind up, it was impossible to argue with her. But, ha - last year I bought another Quasi puppet online. True, nothing can replace my "REAL" Quasimodo, but I just love the satisfaction of knowing that I have a Quasi again, despite my mother's efforts to take him away.

I won't get rid of my dinosaurs. Maybe I'll give it to my childs if I have any, but only when they are old enough to don't broke them.