I think you're right; everybody collects
something. I may have mentioned my
collection here before, but I'll mention it again
anyway, because I always enjoy babbling
about it: keychains.

I started when I was eleven or twelve years old
and I've never stopped. I have about 280 in my
collection now. Most of them have been given
to me, so I probably haven't spent more than
$50 of my own money on my collection in the
fifteen-plus years I've been doing it.

I get the majority of my new keychains at
Christmastime; it's become the failsafe gift to
buy me if you don't know what else I'd want or
need. The rest tend to come from trips.
Whenever I go on a vacation or a trip,
especially if it's to a new place, I have to bring
back a keychain to remember it by. My most
recently-acquired one is a little metal
bat-on-a-string keychain from Mammoth Cave,
Kentucky.

My favorite features of my collection are the
memories. Every keychain in my collection
holds some special memory for me. I still use
most of them; my routine for years has been to
switch keychains once a week, usually on
Sunday nights, and thus I rotate through them.
Each rotation takes longer to get through,
because of course I'm continually adding new
keychains to my collection. I just started a new
cycle late last year, and even though this is
first cycle that I'm starting to "retire" some of
the older ones, I expect it'll take me three or
four years before the next cycle starts.

Leen would like this week's keychain. It's a
horsey keychain. It's metal, and has a horse
face inside a big horseshoe. I think my
grandmother gave it to me when I was in sixth
or seventh grade. Or possibly my mother
might have bought it for me on one of her trips
to visit my grandparents. Either way, I'm pretty
sure it came from Kentucky.

Gri"some of the memories are getting
fuzzy"shny