I love growing up. Somewhat. Different ages (marked by the contrived idea of passing, measurable time) bring about new privileges and certain responsibilities. 25, you can rent a car on your own. 21, you can now drink. 18, voting is supplemented by new found vices of smoking and gambling. 16, the wheel is your new pillow, the trunk your new book case, and the road your new home.

Nothing better represents this new found freedom than the keys in my pocket. Everyone senses endless possibilities married to pure hope. At 16, people feel self-reliant for the first time. They can go. They can see. They can conquer. They can, for the first time, travel beyond the restrictions of a small town in Illinois and view the world for themselves.

But to most 20-somethings, keys, cars, and freedom of travel are taken for granted and their meanings lost.

Fortunately, those meanings haven’t been lost to me.

I grew up an Air Force brat, moving from base to base every 2 or 3 years for the first decade and a half of my life. We finally ended up in O’Fallon, which I now know as home. At least in the sense as I can understand the word. And that’s because I can’t stop traveling. I still yearn for new places and new things. For new people and experiences. To continue a grandiose life littered with meager simplicity.

These keys helped me land my first date. They were in my back pocket when I had my first kiss on the hood of my car. They were there on the dash when she broke the news she cheated on me. (The steering wheel still has scratch marks and peeling rubber.)

These keys went with me when I lived on my own in Lexington, KY, for a year. They traveled ten thousand plus miles across the US when I joined a drum corps. They did it again the year after. West Virginia challenged me to start life anew one more time and the jingling metal and plastic in my pocket remind me of all I’ve done. These trivial scraps will be with me when I move to the next town or city or state or country after this. Truth is I will never stop wandering to and fro, East to West, North to South.

And that car that I mentioned in the beginning is a big part of that. Most people wish for anthologies of their thoughts to magically appear, gold laced pages bound together in Corinthian leather. I simply give guided tours of my museum on wheels. That car is my life. All packed into less than 495 cubic feet of space, an area not even an eighth the size of this room. The dashboard is the most important to me. That’s where I keep things from places I’ve gone and want to go to. It’s where I keep sticky notes my girlfriend left on my window. (I’m a sentimental guy, if you couldn’t tell). There’s sand from a beach in Caibarien, Cuba; my grandfather’s birthplace and a town I hope to visit one day. There’s a turtle carving from the North Shore on Oahu which takes me back to that tropical Thanksgiving in 2011. There’s a baseball glove from my last high school game. A rock from the Appalachians and a rock from the Rockies. There’s a hat which has seen as much as me and will no doubt see more.

When you get down to it, many things could be brought together to describe me. But these. These insignificant pieces of metal looped together by a wire. These tell my story better than any book, picture, or movie ever could.