finders keepers

When I was a kid, I attributed unrealistic feelings and awareness to inanimate objects. Maybe that's why witchcraft in its core appealed to me so much over the years. Sometimes I still get the feeling deep in my gut inanimate objects are somehow sentient, just in a different way from us.

When I was a kid, I had plastic dinosaurs. I named them, maybe a dozen. They played out little dramas all the time. I had my favorite, a little rut. One day late, I was called to dinner, gathered my dinos from the dirt in the backyard and ran for the house.

After dinner, I realized I'd left my favorite outside. My mother said I could get him in the morning. In the morning, he wasn't there. Later that day, the neighbor kid taunted me with the "finders keepers, losers weepers." I told my mother. My mother lectured me on the importance of taking care of my things, that this is a valuable lesson for me.

I find many lessons I could have taken from this. However, this is the lesson that stuck:

Losing something meaningful to me hurt -- a lot. I never wanted to ever be the cause of that kind of pain to anyone.