Dear Chuck E. Cheese's,

I wanted to write to you about the adventures of one of your orange Chuck E. Cheese's bracelets. I am 25 now and have had the bracelet the past six and a half years. I received it on my 19th birthday at the Chuck E. Cheese on Jordan Lane in Huntsville, Alabama. Today I lost it forever somewhere in Las Colinas, Texas. At this point, half-way through my twenties, the loss of this bracelet has brought a tremendous amount of reflection on my life these past several years. I knew the edges of the cloth bracelet were really frayed and I had this sense that I was going to lose the bracelet any day now. However, knowing the end would come soon didn't make the final loss any easier for me. I had no idea that that orange bracelet had become so important to me. I don't know why writing to you about it will make things better.

February 17th, 1993 was the day that I received the bracelet. If memory serves me correctly J was the one that snapped it on my wrist for the first time. She was my boss at the time. For whatever reason I immediately felt like the bracelet was important to me. I felt as though as long as I had it I would be lucky and everything would work out for me. I know how silly it is to think such things about some random jewelry but that's what I had decided. So that is how I started out wearing the lucky charm every day. In time, I found myself in one of those odd twists of life and I was "involved" with my older, married boss. I apparently had put a lot of faith in that "lucky" bracelet and didn't think about how stupid my actions would be. That "relationship" turned out the only way it could with tremendous animosity and bitterness between the two of us. All of a sudden the bracelet had taken on a more ominous presence in my lfe because J had been the one to put it on me. So I felt like I needed to untaint the bracelet somehow.

I quickly sought solace away from J with another woman, this time a fellow college student closer to my age. Her name is E. We came to this arrangement where she would wear the bracelet from her birthday till my birthday rolled around. That meant she had to wear it for most of the year. This went on for about a year and a half where she decided that it was time for me to start wearing it again and that she had no need for it. I sort of considered it cleansed at this point. As is the way in youth I found myself growing distant from E and we did part ways. Four months later she came to me and told me she was pregnant with my child. What a surprise. I was shocked. It was another one of life's little unexpected twists. I began to think to myself, "Wow it's a good thing I had this lucky bracelet or I might have been surprised by something really bad." So that is how the bracelet became present at the birth of my daughter Emily. E was the primary caretaker for Emily and I felt lost as to what I should be doing with my life. It's around this time another interesting event happened in my life.

I went to a rave in Nashville with a number of friends. We stuffed five people in my two door Honda Accord and off we went to have a good time. It was the typical rave thing with loud music, lights, raver kids and wild clothes. A few of my friends dropped acid and maybe some other stuff. Only one of them didn't deal with it to well. At times he walked and talked like a girl and seemed to have no idea who I was. At other times he was screaming over the music as he was throwing himself into a brick wall. Finally it got to the point where the security guards were removing him from the building. Etched in my memory forever is the picture of his limp body folded over the security guard's shoulder like he was passed out. Then all of a sudden he straightened up. It was like a scene from a vampire movie where the vampire just raises up in one fluid movement. The security guard didn't seem to care and continued walking towards the exit. Then my friend put his fingers into the shape of a gun and pressed his fingers against his head, made a shooting motion and collapsed onto the security guard's shoulder again. He then repeated this over and over as he was carried out. Like so many critical moments in ones life I felt like it was just me him and the security guard there and everything was moving in slow motion. I followed them outside and gathered up the other people who had come with me. We learned an ambulance was on the way and we thought it was best we get out of there immediately. As we pulled out of the parking lot we heard the sirens of the ambulance coming up another street. I really felt my adrenaline pumping as we escaped and I drove back to Huntsville. My bracelet had been with me the whole time through that. I didn't do anything that night, and I kinda like to think that bracelet was bringing me luck then. Times weren't always so menacing for me though and another time was far more altruistic.

"The course of true love ne'er did run straight" they say. For a different friend of mine, C, that twisty course to love meant driving from Alabama to Connecticut one evening at 11pm to go see a girl, M, who lived there. It took us about 17 hours of driving to get there. In a luckier moment, I like to think that bracelet was working overtime, we saw her walking home from work as we were heading to where she was staying. I sometimes wonder just how surprised M was as we pulled into a driveway right in front of her as she was walking down the sidewalk. There has never been a time in my life when someone who was 17 hours away showed up one day and pulled up in front of me to drive me home. I know I would have been surprised. C wanted to make sure M was the love of his life, and all I wanted was an orange juice. I got my orange juice, but I think C sort of got his heart twisted up. Maybe if he had an orange bracelet like mine things would have gone more his way. After staying for about four or five hours we immediately drove back to Huntsville with no rest. I don't think I ever really thanked C enough for that great adventure. I remember hoping that my bracelet would always bring me good luck to keep me lucky in love.

I sort of entered a dead zone in my life for a few years. I had no idea what to do with Emily. I had moved to Birmingham looking for a decent job after failing at the college thing. I felt like so many things in my life were forcing me to do things and that I had no control. I told myself that I was really lucky, and that things would have been worse without the orange bracelet. That eventually did change though. By this point in my life I had grown attached to a new woman, R, who also lived in Birmingham. Together we drove from New York state back to Birmingham over the Christmas holidays. We stopped off at all the Civil War sites that we could find. It was a wonderful trip. That summer the two of us drove to Denver and then came back to Birmingham by heading south and then back east through Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and so forth. All those experiences were shared with my bracelet. I always wore it except when I was sleeping or showering. Life seemed to be climbing back up for me. Later on I traveled to Seattle with that bracelet and later Washington D.C. In D.C., during a polygraph exam when I was applying for a security clearance so I could work with the CIA, I remember thinking about my bracelet a lot. I remember hoping it would bring me luck so everything would work. I concentrated on it so hard that it seemed like it was the only thing in the room with me. Then during one more summer I made a solo drive from Birmingham to Fairbanks, Alaska.

I almost felt as though it had become a pet of sorts. I took very good care of it and kept it with me all the time that I could. We drove the length of the Alaskan Highway together. We went through the Badlands. We went through Yellow Stone together. Since I was by myself on this trip it was sort of my traveling companion. The most recent journey that my orange bracelet made was to travel to Dallas for a new job here. It was the first time I'd moved outside of Alabama. I had a new calm about me though. I had a new enthusiasm and understanding that I had never had in my life before. I felt like my relationship with my daughter had improved and that it was strong enough to last through the distance by me moving to Dallas. For three years that bracelet had dutifully travelled every first and third weekend of the month for eight hours to and from Huntsville to get Emily. I felt like I was going to achieve goals again in my life. Finally after so many years my life was on track in a way that it hasn't been for almost seven years.

Then today sometime between 10:30am and 1:30pm I lost my orange bracelet forever. I was crushed. It had been such an important part of my identity. Whenever anyone saw me, they saw that I was wearing that goofy orange Chuck E. Cheese bracelet. Now after writing all this down I feel like I understand what happened much better. That little bracelet has finished its duty to me. I have reached a point where I don't need it anymore. I just hadn't realized I had reached that point yet. It looks like everything is really going to work out great for me from here on out. I like to think that the bracelet was magical in some way, but that's silly. It was an ordinary orange Chuck E. Cheese bracelet. All that luck I needed really came from me. It's taken me till now to realize that. Still I will miss it a great deal for a little while. It served its purpose for so many years and now even in its absence it's helped me understand new things.

Thanks so much for the memories.