A going away print for James Finlayson, a colleague of mine at the Waikato Institute of Technology in the School of Media Arts whose departure proceeded mine by only two months. Thus I thought it fitting that I might share with him a melancholy story about handing in a set of keys.
My office keys.
These two keys have been between my car key and the key to my front door for years now. Perhaps I will miss their dull clink. (were they given to me separately?) They are they type of keys I couldn’t take to the engraver on Ward Street to duplicate. (not that I would have wanted to) They look special enough to require permission to copy, but generic enough to open more than a handful of doors. (borrowed for those other doors on more than a few occasions!) These keys have been left behind on the top of the photocopy machine back when the black and white prints didn’t cost 8 cents and there was a printer in a closet-like room that no longer exists next to Xavier’s office door. In classrooms they were found by honest students and somehow always made it back to my pigeon hole or to my desk or left for me on my chair. (on at least one occasion, I used the side of one to open a bottle of beer!) A few summers ago, at the end of the school year, I put them away for the summer months. I retrieved them a couple of times when I needed to go in to grab a book or pick up a file or just to check in on the pre-schoolyear polish of the floors.
I wonder if I’ll miss checking in on the floors.
