Losing Things

When I was a child and lived with my young and relatively affluent parents in a remote rural and relatively poor community, mum says every now and then she'd find the toys that my young and relatively affluent parents would buy and bring for me from somewhere else lying about in the neighbous' front yards or gardens or played with by their kids. I cannot remember a single one of those toys. I never missed them. I only had a gang of three or four favourite stuffed friends plus a pariah, an unloved giant plastic monstrosity of a doll called Lenka. She was there for bulling and beating. I miss her now. There was also a Chiba. He was a favourite. Bedraggled soft styrofoam and faded bright green spots of Brilliant Green. A shaggy nameless teddy whose thick plastic hair looked unnervingly human, but felt undoubtedly plastic, and the oldest and the best friend Plyutya, who on closer inspection years later turned out to be a West German version of Disney's infernal happy dog. Plyutya is still with us. Chiba has long gone from this world, but not from our memory. The chewbacca-style lad, though, was safely kept in an old dermatine suitcase together with later additions in the form of another cherished member of the fav club, a couple of very-well-worked barbies and a couple of hated-again rag dolls. The fate of the cherished member, as well as the one of the chewbacca, is unknown. And there is little hope that it was favourable. The suitcase was left in my grandparents apartment where I had lived for a while. After their death, my mother rescued the rag dolls she liked, but left everyone else. Her sister rented the apartment out. A number of people have lived there ever since. Among other things left there were...