It was a good, long run.

Most people don’t have even half the time we had together.

If I’m being honest, I knew the day would come that we’d be separated … that we would lose contact entirely and that one, sad, cold, lonely day, er, in August, as it turns out, that it would be completely, utterly, sadly over.

My first pair of pierced earrings.

SIGH.

What … wait, did you think I was talking about Kerry? Nah, we’re stuck together for the long haul, yo.

But I know I saw those little teeny, tiny 14-karat gold balls sometime during quarantine.

Yes, one day during lockdown I was so stir crazy that I started sifting through attic-ware. You know, the old trunk that hasn’t been opened since Carter was president.

The makeshift storage containers that are really just a trio of powder-blue American Tourister luggage pieces from a set circa 1962 that’s crammed with crap from like, three generations worth of kin. The jewelry box from third grade that you can’t seem to toss. The garage sale garbage, er, holdovers that you’ve had since the first time you hosted such an event — four houses ago! — but can’t seem to unload because SOMEONE refuses to list them at, you know, actual garage sale pricing.

Columnist’s Note: This means you, Kerry. Nobody’s going to pay five dollars for the 1982 cornflower blue wallpaper set peppered with the pukey paisley pattern. Period. Fifty-cent table MAX next time,

a’ight? Ditto those dirty dumbbells from dorm-era days. Digressing.

Getting back to the great balls o’ gold I got at 13 — where, oh, where could they be?

Sure they were all scratched up and sorta oblong rather than circular. Yeah, the original backs bailed about a month after I got ’em. And fine, I totally ripped the back off of one them, like, 25 years ago when I was pulling them out to reminisce. Brittle little buggers.

But they were such a source of pride. I was the first one in my immediate family to take the plunge and pump holes in my earlobes. (Mom and Gina had and still have, to this day, no interest.)

They were sort of like my badge of honor, my first step toward independence and you know, grownupedness.

Ah. well. Don’t be sad, 13-year-old Patty. Grownupedness ain’t so grand all the live long day, anyway.

Farewell, little ear enhancers. Enjoy that big jewelry tree up in the sky. Tell all my other lost jewelry hello. At least you were all spared the garage sale spiral of shame, capisce?

Kimerer is a columnist with sad lobes … and way too much attic clutter. #ThanksKerry. Contact her at www.patriciakimerer.com.