Graduation: A heavy metal soundtrack

I spaced them evenly on the wood-and-metal coffee table my roommate crafted earlier in the year:

_The old key to the apartment - the locks were changed days before my departure
_The key to my individual room
_The key to the mailbox

(That poor table, once sleek, had been scuffed to hell by sweating Pabst Blue Ribbons and myriad egg sandwich spills. My bad.)

With the roomie at the beach for a post-grad bash, I had to leave the functioning apartment key for him to find upon returning. I twisted – shuuunk – the deadbolt slot for the last time. We had a narrow garden adjacent to the door, and I slipped the fourth key under a perimeter rock.

Days earlier I handed over to my boss the key to the campus gym where I’d worked the entirety of my scholastic tenure.

Glancing down, my key ring suddenly looked emaciated: the keys to my Civic and my hometown house. Two keys. Pitiful. The carrying device appeared futile.

And with a move to Denver approaching in two days, I’d forfeit the need for the house key.

With only the ability to start a car engine, I recognized an era had ended. It wasn’t the lump-in-the-throat hugs goodbye to friends or the last look at a barren bedroom that communicated college’s finality. Rather a blue karabiner I clipped to my right belt loop every single day jabbed my stomach.

This is no longer your place it yelled from my hip. (Though I’m a subpar dancer, at least my waist has wisdom.)

We’re a rather material-oriented generation. And I like to consider myself not preoccupied with things, but alas a lack of things – or access to those things, I suppose – convinced me of my transience.

My strides around Virginia Tech were complemented by the jingle of metal, of establishment. The keys sang of my kitchen were my chef roommate could enlighten my elemental diet; my bedroom where I’d crank out articles for the school paper; my mailbox where I’d drool over the latest Esquire cover, at which point I’d race back to said bedroom while undressing to – not really. Cough.

After five years and two majors, I always told myself I’d have a good-riddance attitude after walking across the stage in a trash-bag gown. And fuck that hat; I look awful in hats.

As that day approached, people asked if I was sad to leave, what I would miss. I callously suggested nothing came to mind. I’m old, it’s time to go is the nonchalant aura I tried to convey.

I maintained that empty facade pretty well until I abandoned (essentially) five keys. Those five keys capped those five years. A shit-ton happened in those more than 1,500 days.

I traveled Europe, had my heart rattled by romance and tragedy (often synonymous), switched entirely the course of my career, and survived a horrid period of wearing high-water jeans. (Granted I now rock the skinny variety. Whatever.)

Woven into the threads of those, and so many more, experiences were countless individuals who inevitably tweaked my person to who it is now. Different shades of outlook, humor, back-patting and even cruelty kneaded a malleable young adult. And man I’m indebted to that blanket of influences. Yeah, some of them sucked at the time, so fuck you and thank you.

But what a critical duration that has ultimately led me to a solid kick-start professional internship in Colorado. I’ve moved in with my older brother while I find my footing. And what awaited me on my new bedroom desk? A key.

The muted sway of my steps has melody once more, however faint at the moment. The tune will find volume in time, but I learned that old song so well that I won’t ever forget its rhythm.

I’ll miss things. It’ll be contextual, like it has been several times already in the one week since I left the East Coast: snagging a certain coffee drink per the introduction by a friend; conversely sipping a certain alcoholic drink to honor the many, uh, cost-conscious evenings in Blacksburg bars; riding my bicycle to my brother’s design office – Tech’s architecture and design school was the prior default destination.

My bachelor’s is ingrained in most everything I do. Yet the catalog of keys and the resulting playlist will only evolve as the calendar flips.

I’ll anticipate the shuffle mode – arguably life’s only playback – landing on a memory. This is one hell of a classic track.