A New Addition

Yesterday my SPU lanyard had my room key, an E decorated with Disney characters, and an “I Love Bubba” key chain hanging from it.  At breakfast that morning I told Kendra, “I love my lanyard exactly how it is.  It has the perfect amount of things on it, and I don’t want to change it.”

Turns out I was lying.

As I walked through the Freemont Market, the last thing I was looking for was anything to add to my lanyard, since it was already perfect (so I thought).

In the indoor part of the market there is a huge variety of old things.  Antique type writer keys turned into jewelry, 80s sweaters, flattened coins, old postcards, picture frames without pictures… everywhere I looked there was something totally new to sight, yet completely outdated and wonderful.  I was drowned in vintage. 

I continued to meander through various sections, occasionally browsing through a rack of sweaters, or picking up a spoon and inspecting it—I collect spoons and haven’t bought one in a while, yet I wasn’t satisfied with any that I found. 

My friends were in other places throughout the market, yet we were all close enough to keep tabs on each other.  I made my way toward my friend Taylor, and once I reached the table she was standing next to I began to look at all the miscellaneous items.  Eventually I came to a bin full of different metal tags with numbers on them.  Hm, these are interesting. 

Kate, another girl from my floor, explained that they were old hotel tags that had come from either the doors or keys of a hotel room.  She had been looking through them to see if she could find one with her room number on it.

I decided to do the same for myself, just to see if I could find it by chance.  I’m not sure if I would have bought it if I did find it, but the number that I ended up finding was even better. 

My hands were skimming the various tags, and all of them were clinked together as I continued to rummage through them, not sure exactly what I was searching for.  A lot of them started with the number 2 or possessed a lot of zeros.  I wasn’t finding anything remotely close to my room number.  I brushed my hand through them once more and picked a tag up before the number even mentally registered.

303.

No way… The Colorado area code amidst hundreds of random hotel tags and I happened to find it?  Not to mention it was actually here.  I can’t believe it.

And then I laughed.  I showed it to Taylor, McKenna, Sydney, and Kate and I couldn’t stop smiling. 

I bought it for $4, and placed it on my lanyard next to my other key chains. 

Welcome new addition to my lanyard, I’m quite happy you’re here.