Like many of the Christmas decorations in my house the mouse boy and girl Christmas dolls in the picture above have a story. They are actually piggy banks that I got back in 1975 when I was 21 years old. Back then I worked at a bank first as a teller and then as a trainer to all the tellers. It was the 3rd professional job I had gotten in my life.
Technically I'd been working part-time for eleven years by then. I'd been babysitting for neighbors all over my neighborhood for less than $1.00 per hour an hour since I was 10 years old. My first professional job was at 15 1/2 years old working part-time as a nurse's aide in a nursing home that my grandmother was in. The women who ran the nursing home used to be the school nurse so she knew me and I knew her.
After that I worked part-time as a cashier in a grocery store and then as a deli clerk in another grocery store. While working at the deli store I lost the tip of one of my fingers, but that's another story for another post.
Back to the mouse banks. The first Christmas at the bank they had some sort of a promotion going on. I can't remember whether they were offered free for opening up a savings account or offered for a discount. They were so adorable and so popular they went quickly so the manager of the bank I was working at ordered more.
I just loved the mouse piggy banks as I just thought you couldn't look at them and not smile. They were just too adorable.
Well, for some reason I ended up with a boy and girl mouse piggy bank of my own. Whether there were extra's left over after the promotion was over, or bank manager gave them to me because he knew how much I loved them, or I bought them - I don't know. All I know is that they ended up becoming one of my first Christmas decorations and they have been with me for 44 years.
When we first moved into our current house they were one of the few Christmas decorations we had up at the time. I can remember putting them up on the dining room mantle. They looked adorable up there but the mantle is so long they looked a little lost and lonely for awhile.
When our twin granddaughters saw them they, too, fell in love with them and always looked forward to seeing them at the holidays. Well, like everything else over time decorations get replaced with new decorations and so on and so on. In my house most decorations I've purchased eventually get replaced with some of my handmade decorations.
The mouse piggy bank dolls have been in a box of old Christmas decorations in the basement for about twenty years now. For some reason I wanted to take them out this year and put them on the bookshelves you see in the pictures above.
The bookshelves are in our kitchen and were made by my younger brother for a very specific reason. They, too have a story, but that is also for another day.
In any event, for some reason I thought about the mouse decorations this year and decided I'd see what condition they were in after being in storage for twenty years. Well, low and behold after all this time they still look good as new. I was pleasantly surprised but probably shouldn't have been a they're made out of really thick vinyl. So, I decided I'd put the mouse piggy banks out this year and placed them on the bottom shelves of the bookcases in the kitchen.
I do have to admit they do look adorable there. After all these years they still bring a smile to my face. Now that's a really good decoration in today's trying times.
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