Tag: mementos

Heirlooms, Real and Pretend

If, in years to come, my descendants go through my treasured personal possessions to understand their family, they are going to be massively confused.

Pocket watch given to my real ancestor William Jackson on his retirement in 1920.
Pocket watch given to my real ancestor William Jackson on his retirement in 1920.

My biggest adventure involving this watch: dancing so hard at a friend’s wedding that the watch flew out of my pocket and the glass got smashed. Sorry William Jackson!

Copy of Dickens's Christmas stories given to the fictional valet Jackson, my character in a long running roleplay campaign, by his employer Lore Buffington, aka my friend Jules.
Copy of Dickens’s Christmas stories given to the fictional valet Jackson, my character in a long running live roleplay campaign, by his employer Lore Buffington, aka my friend Jules.
Complete with inscription, written 100 years after its supposed date.
Complete with inscription, written 100 years after its supposed date.

My biggest adventure involving this book: The night Jackson’s history of insanity was revealed in an old smugglers’ cove, while Lord Buffington was busy staking his vampire sister. It turns out that sane people don’t carry cake and tea through gun fights, and vampire slayer references are inevitable for a character known as Buffy.

Many of my happiest memories are of games I’ve played in. I just hope for their sake that future family historians can disentangle the real from the fictional. Or maybe not – maybe it’ll be more fun to believe that their ancestors slew monsters as well smelting steel.