Today’s Prompt: Go to a local café, park, or public place and write a piece inspired by something you see. Get detailed: leave no nuance behind.

Ironically, I went somewhere today that is right out of my childhood memories, but I didn’t remember until my husband pointed it out.

Our kids don’t go to normal school, they attend cyber school.  This means they attend live classes online, in my living room.  This is great fun, because it means we get to chime in on all their lessons.  It also means that they have to go somewhere else to take there standardized tests, known here as the PSSA’s.

This year, they’re taking them at the local Days Inn.  It just so happened to be the same place I’d had my ROTC ball in high school.

Of course, I didn’t remember.  Of course he did.  And of course, since we’d both attended the ball, just at different times, we had to go see it.

There was a business fair today, but I could still see how it had looked that night.  I wore a gold gown, petite white gloves, and more make up than I had ever had before that day.  And I went with my best friend, instead of a guy.

There were chandeliers, and a terrible catered dinner.  But the best moment of the night?  I got a medal.

it was the first time I remember getting awarded for doing something.  We’d had a big national inspection a week before, and it was discovered that not all of our Class A uniforms had a required patch on their arm.  I came in early armed with thread and needles, ready to baste stitch as many of these jackets as humanly possible.  A few other cadets joined in, and we got it done.  I mean, some of them were sort of crooked, but damn it, they were there!

I got to walk up and get my medal, which I then got to wear on my class A uniforms every time we wore them.  Now, it wasn’t as cool as the cadet who had preformed cpr on a lady and kept her breathing until the ambulance got there.  No, that was way, way cooler.  But I got a medal for doing something I was good at, and volunteering.  It also set a precedent for the rest of my life.  I was a girl, in ROTC, and I sewed.  I was and am, exactly who I am, and my gender has not a thing to do with it.

All of that from walking into a ball room I hadn’t been in for over a decade.

Today’s Prompt: Write about a loss: something (or someone) that was part of your life, and isn’t any more.

So, the loss that I’m going to talk about today might not seem like a very big one at first, but it’s honestly something that I am impacted by on almost a weekly bases, even though the loss of the actual thing occurred many years ago now.

My husband and I were moving into our very first apartment together.  My goodness, it was so small and crappy.  There were four rooms; two ‘bedrooms’ a bathroom the size of a closet, and a living room/kitchen area.  You had to walk through our daughters’ room to get to our bedroom, and you had to walk through both to get to the bathroom.  Did I mention it was small?

We didn’t care, though.  It was our first place together, we could afford it, and we could have a cat.

On moving day, there was this one box that I’d backed from my old living room.  I wanted everyone to be very careful with it, because it had my whole dvd collection.  Some of my regular readers will remember that I am a huge geek, so when I say dvd collection, I mean a huge collection. I mean all five seasons of Angel, Firefly, The Critic (most people haven’t even heard of the critic), the first three seasons of Psych, all the Charlie Brown Holiday specials, both Scary Godmother movies, first three seasons of Dexter and a limited edition version of Nightmare Before Christmas.

Like a fool, I wrote ‘DVDs’ on the side.  I wanted everyone to be careful with the box, you see.

Of course, being a cheap and small apartment, it was also an apartment in a bad neighborhood.  Not like a ‘don’t go out at night, lock the damn door, keep a crowbar by your bed’ neighborhood.  More like a, ‘stupid downstairs neighbor’s smoking up again, and there are the cops for the third time this week,’ bad neighborhood.  Needless to say, my dvd box got stolen.

Here’s the real problem, though.  There was more in that box than just my collection.

There was also a quilt, with three mountains, three trees and a river.  My grandmother made it for her twin boys, who left it behind when they moved out on their own.  She was going to throw it away, and I took it instead.  I loved that quilt.  It made me think of my grandma’s house after church on Sundays.  It made me think of watching Star Trek and X-Files with her on nights my mom worked. (I come by the geek gene honestly, even if it did skip a generation.)

There was also a little brass turtle.  You could take his shell off, and put things in him.  He belonged to my great grandma.  When I was little, I used him as a pretend tea set.  I played with him every New Years Eve when we’d go there and play Penny Poker.  My mom and Grandma June would smoke, and I’d drink diet Pepsi out of a can with a straw.  When she passed away, our family went through her house and put things in keep, toss, donate piles.  The little brass turtle came home with me.  My daughter played with him.

Now, I’ve rebuilt my collection of dvd’s.  It took time, and money.  But my quilt and my turtle, which the thief probably tossed without another thought, those things I miss.