I really expected this to be a voodoo story.

Well, given my penchant for cemeteries and ghosts, perhaps I could conjure something up for you.

I have a 'thing' about hair -- if you flashed that braid at me, I'd probably run away in terror. I can't explain it, but it's nothing personal. It's just... hair.

I don't really have many artifacts -- we moved a lot and my parents split up when I was in high school so I have no idea where most of my childhood stuff went. Once in a while I think of things I wish I still had, but I have no idea if they still exist in a box somewhere, or got dumped or sold or what!

We have a bag of my bf's 3ft dreds - I think they'll make lovely cushion stuffing eventually.

I have a box of various rocks I picked up on a trip through the Australian desert 20-odd years ago. And my collection of different sizes of prosthetic eyes! They'll make a great necklace one day, drilled through the pupils and strung with some nice beads.

I have a deck of cards I sewed together when I was about 9. I was convinced that the only way card sharks could do that hand-to-hand deck thing was if they were connected somehow.

We have a bag of my bf's 3ft dreds - I think they'll make lovely cushion stuffing eventually.

Whoa. For real? Maybe this is my 'hair thing' popping up again, but I'd think they'd smell, wouldn't they? Especially since they've been sitting in a bag?

I'll tell you what I wish I had. My skate key. I had those old kind of roller skates, way before Rollerblades, that fit over your shoes. You tightened them up with a skate key, a metal sort of thing, which you then wore on a ribbon around your neck, so that when you tumbled over a crack in the sidewalk and your skates became loose, you could tighten them up again and then keep going.

I don't know why I care but I wish I still had that skate key, hanging on its dirty shredded purple ribbon.

loiseau: no, not at all. They were only cut off a few months ago and they were the dreds of an aspie - regularly washed with Dove soap and of almost precision thickness. But I don't think odour will be an issue - I too have a long ponytail I chopped off maybe 15 years ago and it doesn't smell.

I have a small jar with two of my wisdom teeth and one other in it. I don't know why it's important to me other than I do tend to collect dead things like skeletons I find in the woods, birds wings, that sort of thing. If I ever have anything else removed from my body, I hope to keep it in a jar, too. OH! and I should tell you that I am a little eccentric.

Aw, I also had a skate key on a ribbon around my neck. I wish I had that, too.

I wish I had the fantastic drawing that my friend Hugo did of me in junior high. I was the model of the day in art class and Hugo was an excellent artist. He gave me the drawing. I didn't save it.

I have thrown away many things in my life that I shouldn't have thrown away. Like, yearbooks. I NEVER looked at them. Why should I keep them? I reasoned that all of my friends that I cared about in high-school I'm still friends with. I don't need to see their picture. They did have a lot of very sweet and funny inscriptions. One of the sweetest was from my friend that is now deceased. I've thrown away many personal journals as well.

My grandmother used to give me Madame Alexander dolls every year for my birthday. I sold them all. It's kind of a shame but I wasn't attached to them and I didn't display them in adulthood. I didn't need the money. I probably should have kept them. It kind of bothers me that I don't have a very sentimental heart when it comes to objects.

I had to get my thumbnail cut off when I was a kid, after I broke my thumb. I held on to it until I went to college - now it's probably packed up in a box somewhere at home.

I have a 4ft long, bright purple, stuffed toy dog. I made it when I was in College, scaling up a regular-sized toy dog pattern. Continuing the hair thing, my Mom and I stuffed it with the contents of an old horsehair mattress. It has moved with me wherever I go (10,000 miles and counting ...).

There's a foot of ponytail in my sewing box.

I too have my ponytail from 5th grade.

I went through a major purge of stuff when I went into the navy, I got rid of pretty much everything. One thing I did get back from a friend who had taken my books, was my first book that I remember actually buying. It's a Pogo book, that I loved for the drawing and the funny way the animals talked, completely not getting all the political satire that was going (I was only 7 or 8).

Ii do have a jar of a gay porn star's ashes that I keep on the ledge of one of the door frames in my bedroom, but no hair... although there are some bone fragments you can hear rattling around if you shake the jar. They were the pseudo-door prize at his farewell party: at his behest, he felt that everyone who wanted a piece of him was entitled to some.

I have, in two different places, from two different eras, boxes of detritus from old relationships. Letters, small gifts, rocks, beads, photos, etc etc etc.

One is up in the garage, and another is in a locked cabinet way away from everything. Although there is nothing to hide, I hide the stuff. It's like pieces of me that I still treasure.

I'm a purger. I tend to get rid of anything that reminds me of anything in my past. It sometimes takes years to say goodbye, but the sentimentality is usually replaced by the desire for clean, open space and organization. The only thing I've kept is my brother's Carebear and some other random stuffed animals. I'm soon to purge these as well, because they are really messing with the clean feeling of the room. Hard to get plushies to match the decor...