Keepsakes and Memorabilia: Mementos From My Former Life

I always thought this would make for interesting and revealing conversation with friends: If you could sum up your childhood by compiling a few items, what would they be?

Going through Mom and Dad's "stuff," I've found bits and pieces of my childhood. A Hopalong Cassidy box of paper straws. Partially used ticketbooks from early 1960's Disneyland. I can still pan for gold or sample the Old Miner's Burro Ride (if it's still in existence) without a charge because I unearthed a Knott's Golden Nugget Adventures Fun Book.

Dad liked to enclose important items in frames like Mom's check from her first sale and Brent's first dollar earned.

Mom kept a sampling of our clay models (my piglike bear and a man's face created by my sister), even my pressed preschool handprint.

Most things, I know, landed into the great "trashcan in the sky." But it's amusing to find these kinds of keepsakes (maybe put them into a scrapbook). It makes me glad that mom wasn't absolutely fastidious about her home. And it's kind of a reminder that I had a life before I got married at 20.