My key thingy broke yesterday.
Technically, I believe it’s called a lanyard. It’s one of the big things that you can attach your keys to. Colleges, churches, football teams, lots of people sell them. Mine was a black one with “Orioles” stitched on the side in orange.
I bought it for five bucks outside Oriole Park at Camden Yards during the playoffs (the O’s choked, as usual) when I was sixteen. I had finally gotten my driver’s license, and I decided I needed something to put my car keys on so I wouldn’t lose them.
It served me well through high school, through college, through road trips across twenty-three states.
But as I wandered home from a final night of partying with my friends as many of them wandered off to start real lives after graduation, I was flinging it around, wrapping and unwrapping it around my hand as I have always done. Finally, the thread just gave out, and my keys pathetically plopped to the ground.
I knew it was coming. The sides had been fraying for years, so I knew it was only a matter of time before it bit the dust, but it still makes me kind of sad to see this thing that has really become an integral part of who I am just…gone.
I always had the lanyard part hanging out of my right front pocket, and it’s odd to not have that anymore. I got one of those carabiner things to hold my keys until I have something more permanent, but it’s really weird to have my constant companion of five years no longer with me.
I know what you’re thinking: “Jesus, Ellen, it’s a keychain for fuck’s sake.”
And I can certainly see where you’re coming from on that.
But at a time where I’ve just had a large number of my friends move away for good, where my mom is seriously thinking about selling the house I grew up in, and I have little contact with most of my friends from high school, something like this affects me quite a bit more than it really should.
Well, that, and it’s the Happy Fun Time of the Month, so you know how we chicks get. All emotional about things that just make no goddamn sense to get emotional over. Thanks, estrogen!
But while I’d like to be able to dismiss it as periodic emotional oddity, I really feel sad that this stupid thing broke. It was a symbol of my youth and freedom, and now it’s gone.
And yes, I realize I’m reading way too much into this, but this is my weblog, not yours, so nyaaaaaah.