# What item have you carried on your person for the longest time?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion
**Created:** [March 10, 2006, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848 "2006-03-10T16:53:49Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2006, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/21 "2006-03-10T21:30:20Z")
I wore my wedding ring for 25 years, then I misplaced the ring. I’m still married to the same wife, though.\*\* 28 years today!\*\*
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### Author:  [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2006, 9:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/22 "2006-03-10T21:56:57Z")
It’s not technically ‘on me’ but I have a little plastic figurine of Snoopy as the WW1 (or is it WW2?) Flying Ace in my car up on the dash in the front window.
He’s been with me in every car since I learned to drive in the summer of 1981. (gasp!)
You’d think he’d be faded from the sun, but he isn’t.
He’s my co-pilot. 🆒
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### Author:  [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/23 "2006-03-10T22:01:18Z")
> [@AskNott](#):
>
> I wore my wedding ring for 25 years, then I misplaced the ring. I’m still married to the same wife, though.\*\* 28 years today!\*\*
Oops! :smack: Make that **27 years today.**
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### Author:  [@twickster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/twickster)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/24 "2006-03-10T22:01:36Z")
> [@BiblioCat](#):
>
> You’d think he’d be faded from the sun, but he isn’t.
> He’s my co-pilot. 🆒
Hm – Dog is your copilot? 😉
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### Author:  [@Southpaw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Southpaw)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2006, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/25 "2006-03-10T22:25:25Z")
As a joke a friend gave me a Matchbox Ferrari (red, just like the one Magnum, PI drove). I said I would carry it with me always and I do. That was in 1982, I think. So for the past 24 years I’ve been carrying a car in my purse.
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### Author:  [@Rebo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rebo)
#### Post date: [March 10, 2006, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/26 "2006-03-10T22:33:27Z")
I have an ID card made for my son when he was 6 months old. He’s 21 now. 😉
(It’s just the _cutest_ picture!)
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### Author:  [@Marlitharn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marlitharn)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 7:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/27 "2006-03-11T07:39:58Z")
I have a newspaper clipping from 1985, a photograph of one of my dogs being nosed awake by one of my baby goats. There for a couple of months the local paper’s photographer was out at our farm every other day, taking pictures of our various animals, but this was the only one I saved.
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### Author:  [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/28 "2006-03-11T08:24:59Z")
Probably my Pope card. Looks pretty much like [this.](http://s23.org/wiki/Template:Pope_card) It gets the first spot in my wallet, in fact, in front of my driver’s license. I think I’m about to replace it, though, since I just found a snazzy way to make a new one online.
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### Author:  [@Savannah](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Savannah)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/29 "2006-03-11T08:37:44Z")
Wedding and engagement rings. I have other items that I’ve kept since childhood, but not worn on my person. 10 years married now.
I hope to make it to 27 years! Congratulations!
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### Author:  [@Anastasaeon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anastasaeon)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/30 "2006-03-11T09:00:35Z")
For about 19 years, I’ve been lugging around this poem my old best friend gave to me when we were in elementary school. It’s just a small piece of lined paper, torn out of her scribbler, and written in her childish-yet-deliberately-neat handwriting, in blue pen. I’m going to take a risk here, and write the short exerpt - I _think_ it’s from a larger poem, but I don’t know who wrote it, or how long it is:
_When your pockets are empty
And your heart is sad
When fellow men distrust you
Your name and credit bad
The person who will then
Stand by you and defend
Must surely be without a doubt
A true and noble friend._
I can’t find it anywhere online. It might even be something she read on a potholder or something. But I never forgot it. We drifted apart over the years, and I don’t keep in contact with her now, but she was a saint. Anytime I do happen to see her, we start chatting as though we’d never been apart more than a day, and get along and laugh just like old times.
I very recently misplaced it, and I’ve been frantic. If it’s lost from me forever, I just hope it ended up in good hands; with someone who deserved it. I know, chances are slim. Just let me wish. It makes me feel better.
Mods, if I’m tramping boisterously all over a copyright rule, my humblest apologies, and please maim the poem above.
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### Author:  [@Dr.Rieux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Rieux)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 10:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/31 "2006-03-11T10:54:03Z")
A ticket stub from the Freedom Train, dated January 23, 1976 (my sixteenth birthday).
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### Author:  [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 11:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/32 "2006-03-11T11:23:41Z")
My wedding ring (4 years), followed by my patient card from the National Cancer Center (find 2 tumors and the third is half price!), which I’ve had for three years. The other contents of my wallet get cycled out pretty regularly.
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### Author:  [@Madd\_Maxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Madd_Maxx)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/33 "2006-03-11T11:54:41Z")
I still have my Maryland Firearm and Hunter Safety Training card, signed Sept. 1 1988. I was 10.
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### Author:  [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/34 "2006-03-11T13:51:08Z")
A friend who died a few years ago used to still carry in his wallet his National Registration card [i.d. card] required by wartime regulations. They were abolished in 1952. I’ve met others who do the same.
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### Author:  [@mailman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mailman)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/35 "2006-03-11T13:59:27Z")
I have my SS card from circa 1971. I have “the last nickel I ever squeezed out of [insert ex-jerk boss’s name here].” When I cashed the check for, like $163.05, the nickel happened to be a buffalo nickel, so I stuck it in my wallet. There it has remained. That was around 1977. The wallet my Dad’s best friend’s wallet. Yogi’s wife gave it to Dad when Yogi died, and he gave it to me. It’s been with me since…sometime in the eighties.
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### Author:  [@Zeldar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zeldar)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/36 "2006-03-11T14:02:55Z")
In my case it would be my comb although the specific comb has changed over time. This latest one has to be at least 10 years old.
I don’t normally carry anything but folding money in my pockets. I quit carrying two pocket knives, keys, change, wallet and some souvenir type things when I became mainly a person whose time is spent mostly at home.
When I do leave the house for the store or other errands where the car is needed, I take my wallet. Its contents continue to change with the one major exception of my Social Security card which dates back to the mid 50’s. I think I was just barely into my teens when I got it.
Other documents in the wallet have been there a while, but most of them are of renewable nature and only last a few years.
Even my glasses go through changes. My wedding ring (now 20 years old) would probably be the oldest item beside the comb.
I had to think about this quite a bit.
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### Author:  [@PunditLisa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PunditLisa)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 2:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/37 "2006-03-11T14:08:08Z")
[Soap box] People, people, people. Get those Social Security cards out of your wallet! Someone steals your wallet (like happened to me back in November) and a thief has everything they need to steal your identity. [/Soap box]
For me, it would be my duplicate driver’s license issued in November after my purse was stolen.
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### Author:  [@BiblioCat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BiblioCat)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/38 "2006-03-11T14:37:23Z")
> [@twickster](#):
>
> Hm – Dog is your copilot? 😉
Yes, yes he is.
🆒
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### Author:  [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/39 "2006-03-11T14:42:44Z")
Key ring. Since 1976. So 30 years. Good God.
Just a simple piece of 3/4 inch copper pipe about 3/8" long.
It is attached to my actual springy key ring with a boot lace. I have had to replace the boot lace about 4 times. That involes a new lace, glue and thread.
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### Author:  [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)
#### Post date: [March 11, 2006, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-item-have-you-carried-on-your-person-for-the-longest-time/347848/40 "2006-03-11T15:19:31Z")
This is a really sad thing, but the oldest thing which I carried around got lost. I used to have had the same comb for 25 years, until I lost it a couple of months ago. I haven’t found anything to replace it with. ☹ I think I’ll go out and have a couple of drinks now.
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