The standard issue at St. Thomas is the semi-clear plastic cardholder, with a ring for keys. Nearly everyone has one, or a variation on it - it is enough to get you food, laundry, dorm access, room access, books, and groceries on campus. It is your life, encapsulated in a card and a key. That said, I lost mine today, if only for a short time.

My shorts had no pockets, so I did what anybody would do - hooked the keys around a shifter on my bike. This had been done many times before, and without incident. In this case, unfortunately, the keys popped off as I bounced off a curb and crossed Cretin Avenue. 200 yards later, I realized their usual jangling was absent and that I suddenly was no longer in possession of anything important from St. Thomas. I just lost all ability to eat, sleep, and identify myself.

Great.

Doing an about face, I kept my eyes to the ground, scanning for card and keys. I found them, in the middle of Cretin Avenue. During an interminably long green light, I watched helplessly as cars ran over my keys. Caught for a moment by the rapidly moving tires, the keys would fly up into the air, making a graceful arc, and then pound back into the road again. This repeated several times, and during each I hoped that the card case would not land on it’s side, to be blown to smithereens by the next car. A city bus approached. “Great” I thought, “the thing’s made it through three 3000 pound cars, but there’s no way a bus the size of a couple of elephants can do anything but annihilate what is left of my stuff.” With a turn signal, the bus left the intersection, and I received the “it’s a good time to walk” signal.

With the notable exception of a destroyed key ring, everything survived. Thankfully.

UPDATE: Picture of the keys.

• Cars
• Anecdotes
• University of St. Thomas
• ID Cards

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