I am not the biggest fan of little knick-knacks. However, that does not stop me from collecting little trinkets and random small items. I am proud to say that every single knick-knack I have has been given to me by someone else. This creates a lot of fun stories to tell when someone asks where I got a pink, heart-shaped rose quartz trinket. I can explain how I got it from my friend Julia during our freshman year here at St. Bonaventure University.Â
Recently, my beloved keychain that housed my car keys, keys, and two little knick-knacks, one I received freshman year, the other is one of the sweetest and saddest stories I have out of all my knick-knacks (content warning: mention of death in a family). I have since switched it over to a wallet keychain, which is unusual and not my usual setup.Â
The second knick-knack I received was from a stranger at the beginning of winter in my senior year of high school. I was walking out to my car during lunch with a friend, who now goes to school in Florida, to grab things we forgot from our mornings at BOCES. An older lady was out power walking around the school; she called us over as we passed nearby.
She began to hand us two little mittens, knitted or crocheted, to make two different mittens with slightly different colors. She then explained that she saw us walking out and chatting, and that we reminded her of her now deceased daughters. She apologized for being a bit forward about it, but explained that each year around winter, she walks by the school, typically on the anniversary of her daughter’s passing, with two little knick-knacks to hand to those who remind her of her daughter or bring her joy, and she would really appreciate it if we each took a mitten.Â
It sounds so cartoonish and was something that felt so completely random and a little weird. It all happened at once, surprising my friend and me. We took a mitten, and I ended up looping it around with my car keys on a key chain and carrying it around everywhere I went. That tradition has continued. Despite the fraying string that creates the loop so the mitten can it be attached and continue to hang around on my car keys, the white in the mitten is beginning to look more like gray, and the fact that it has never officially been washed.Â
Regardless, the bright colored mitten came into my life at a time where I was not doing the greatest and seemed to brighten my life up a little bit. The sad story that went along with the mitten reminded me of the very sweet conversation my friend and I had with the sweet lady who gave it to us and reminds me that some of the best things come completely out of the blue. Now I refer to it as my lucky mitten, it’s earned that title.Â
The mitten has never failed to make me smile on even the hardest days. I think about the lady who gave it to me a lot and really hope she’s doing well despite not knowing how much she’s made one high school senior smile with just a small, simple, colorful mitten. Knick-knacks are great, but the story behind how they got into your possession tends to be even better (in my opinion, at least).