Hey little girl, you want a blue ribbon?

Several weeks ago, following the NYT article on the hunter pony's death after receiving a shot, Denny Emerson made several posts to Facebook about the corruption of "buying a child's ribbon" by paying for access to the perfect pony.  About the same time, my mom flew to Maryland from California for 2 days for the closing of the new farm -- she flew Southwest which generously offers two free checked luggage bags for each ticket.  As my mom will be moving here in a little over a year after she retires, we wanted to take full advantage of baggage space to bring something to the farm.  But what to bring that my mom wouldn't need, the airlines wouldn't break, and the new farm wanted?!?!  And then it hit me... ribbons!  My mom had several boxes in her garage full of my old horse show ribbons!  So, my mom packed 2 suitcases full of ribbons.  Before I could move them into the new house, I drove them around in the trunk of my car a few days.  Then they stayed in the horse trailer a few days.  Then into the truck.  Meanwhile, I'm reading Denny's posts about the price of a ribbon, and I'm thinking, forget buying the ride on the pony.... I've got a blue ribbon right here in the trunk of my car, little girl!  How much you give me for it?!?!  I felt like I had a fake-Rolex pawn shop in my car!  When I finally moved the ribbons into the house and opened the suitcase, I found a TSA inspection card.  CAN YOU IMAGINE what they must have thought?????  I'm sure they've seen some pretty strange stuff in people's luggage, but 2 suitcases full of old horse show ribbons?!?!?  That must have been a first.  It was so much fun to dig through them and remember so many wonderful times with such wonderful horses (thankfully I'm very good about writing the details of the show on the back of each ribbon).  I'm working on a little project to display them in the new house, so I'll be sure to let you know how it turns out (and for those concerned, no, I definitely will not be cutting up the ribbons - I can't bring myself to do that - I love each one too much!).