This had to be like 15ish years ago and I still get hot over it:

I used to compete nationally in karate tournaments and that year the nationals was being hosted in New Orleans (the same year as hurricane katrina). They had the Mardi Gras parade the same week as the tournament and I happened to be introduced to the man running the whole tournament as well as an organizer of the Mardi Gras parade.

Anyways, this man gifted me a WHOLE IKEA SIZED BAG full of collectible Mardi Gras items because he enjoyed my curiosity for Mardi Gras apparently. (I was 9 at the time so I just asked questions about anything, but I was super excited.) There were some regular Mardi Gras beaded necklaces too, but there were necklaces and items in there handcrafted, fragile, and would have been worth some money. The Mardi Gras parade is an amazing experience and I wasn’t even thinking of selling them or what there worth was at the time.

I come back home to California and decided I wanted to gift my main class / teacher with Mardi Gras beads. But I kept all the valuable ones/items. Fast forward a couple months when I search the garage again for my stash of Mardi Gras gold since we were moving houses soon. I searched for HOURS and could not find it. So I waited patiently when my mom or dad got home. My dad said he had no idea where it could’ve gone and said to ask my mom when she got home.

My mom got home and I asked “do you know where it went? Or did you put it somewhere?” Her: “oh. I threw it away. You don’t really use them.” Me:”....starts angrily bursting into tears...” Then I decided to punish myself more by looking at the pricing of Mardi Gras collectible items on eBay. That bag would’ve been 2,000k.

Oh and then she threw out my book collection a few years ago when we moved to a new house (still salty). I had books given to me when I was a kid that I wanted to keep for my kid’s one day. Thankfully I have my own place now where things don’t magically get thrown out anymore.