Many people have a favorite bracelet, or sweatshirt that they may wear. It makes them feel safe and comfortable, and if they aren’t wearing it, they may even feel as if a piece of them is missing. My favorite thing isn’t a sweatshirt or a bracelet, but it is a hair tie. My yellow hair tie. It’s thin, fragile, wraps around my pony tail multiple times, and is starting to fade from a bright yellow to a white. Imagine something that goes every where with me, it never leaves my side, let alone my body. It watches my every move when it’s wrapped around my hair. It sees what I don’t see when I’m walking in the hallway, it sees the people behind me, and hears their conversation. It’s with me through my fights, through the sweat on the field, and at the movies. It sees the ups and the downs. It listens. It listens to the strangers behind me and their conversations, their arguments, and their laughs. The hair ties that the people behind me have in, have their own story. Their hair ties see the things behind them, creating their own memories. They are stretched to the thickness of the hair. When you ask to borrow a hair tie from someone you are asking to take something that they may not even realize holds many memories for them. It stretches each day until one day it rips, the memories fade, and it just becomes a ripped fabric under your bed. You grab a new one and start the journey over again. The memories, the laughs, the cry’s, the ups, the downs.