Keys

Keys are cool. They get you into places and help you open doors.

When I was high school and college, and perhaps even before that, I had a mild obsession with keys.

In the 20/20 hindsight that comes from being decades past that age, I suspect that my obsession wasn’t so much with the oddly shaped stamped bits of metal, but with what they symbolized.

To my young mind, keys represented responsibility and by extension power and authority. Being entrusted with a key was at the same time a burden and an honor, signifying that you were worthy to keep the key from being misused — or at least that you were the one entrusted to do so for your shift.

Hey, I was the middle of eight children, so any place I could carve out my own little place to shine — at least in my own mind — was necessary for my personal mental well-being. So things like having the keys to the mop closet where they kept the floor cleaning chemicals at the grocery store where I worked in high school or having the keys to the sound booth in my high school’s theater were big deals for me.

I was a strange kid. My obsession with key carrying likely peaked in college when I worked as a center manager at the university center on campus. There were only a handful of us who had the job and with it came a huge key ring that was large enough to be worn as a bracelet by some of the women center managers on staff.

Among other things, we were tasked with opening and then securing the dozens of meeting room doors, storage closets, and electronics cabinets.

At the change of shift, we would pass the key ring and pager to the person relieving us along with a detailed report of anything that had happened in the prior shift.

The key ring probably weighed close to a pound and it is very likely that a significant number of the keys on it were unused relics that had never been removed when the corresponding lock was taken out of service.

Key rings are like that. The keys often remain long after the need for them has gone away.

While keys are cool, they are also heavy, not only in actual weight, but with the burden they bring. The responsibility that comes with carrying the keys means that you are the one that must respond no matter how trivial or great the crisis may be. The burden of responsibility wears on you and can break you down.

My current goal in life it to minimize the number of keys I carry. Or, at the very least when I acquire new keys, making a point to get rid of others, passing them on to people who will better use them or tucking them safely in a drawer to either be forgotten or retrieved when needed.

It is the ultimate fate of all keys to be lost in the bottom of a junk drawer or ending up in a jar on the shelf of a thrift store far removed from any corresponding lock.

I suppose, in a way, those of us who carried those keys have a smilier fate in store for us. The treasures and secrets that we hide away lose their luster or relevance with the passage of time and we are destined to fade away, forgotten or actively ignored.

In those times I can go days being key free, I feel the freedom I did in my childhood — without the cares and burdens that come with being a grownup.

Perhaps, someday I will succeed in foisting all my remaining keys onto others along with all the weight those responsibilities bring.

Until then, I just have to remember to leave those keys on the hook above the entryway table when I come home so that I can be free of them for a little while.

Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News. Contact Brian at BrianWilson@centralwinews.com.