Luck, Faith and Friendship

When my friend Dylan went into boot camp for the USMC this past June, he invited me over one day and asked me to pick out anything of his that I would like to keep, saying that if his friends and I didn't take it, it would end up being thrown away anyway.

The thought of him giving all of his stuff away so nonchalantly, of giving up the world he had known in all of his seventeen years, choked me up... So I told him that all I truly wanted would be something sentimental to remember him by in his time away. Thinking a bit, he walked over to a pile of things and dug around a bit before pulling out a thin blue ribbon with six tiny charms attached to it. He brought that over and gave it to me, explaining that each of those charms had been something he had run across totally by chance in his lifetime, and that he kept them as symbols of good luck after that.

So, giving it to me, he said that he could give me his good luck charms because he knew he wouldn't need them, that the prayers of his family and friends would be more than enough to replace them when he was gone. Obviously, these charms have meant a lot to me since then. I tied them around a small metal cross that I had at home in the meantime and have since brought them to DU.

Now, knowing that I get to see Dylan tomorrow safe and sound as a graduated Marine, it felt applicable to post a picture of Dylan's good luck charms and the cross I placed them around.