Exchange Life ad: Nine countries on two keychains

For 26 years, my husband and I had one rule. A trip doesn’t count until it’s stamped. Last spring in Greece, that rule stopped working. Mike made up the rule on our honeymoon in Ireland. We got our first stamp together, and he kissed the page. “Now it’s official,” he said. After that, it became our thing. Every new country, we’d walk away from the border desk and open our passports side by side. Two stamps. Same date. Same country. Mike would hold up his hand for a high five, right there in the airport. People stared. We didn’t care. At home, our two passports sit together in a wooden box on the shelf. Twenty-six years of high fives, all in one box. Then we flew to Athens in May. Greece was going to be our ninth country. We had our passports out before we even left the plane. But there was no desk. No officer. No stamp. Just tall gray machines in a row. Mike put his passport face down on the glass. A camera took his picture. A little door slid open. Thirty seconds. Done. Mike stood on the other side holding his passport open. He looked at the empty page. Then at me. “Well,” he said. “Guess we didn’t go.” He was joking. I laughed. But I didn’t really think it was funny. I asked a man at the airport desk about it. He told me Europe stopped stamping passports for good this year. It’s all done on a computer now. So we did what everyone does. We took a photo of us under the big “Welcome” sign. Mike said that could be our stamp. I knew it would end up on my phone with 3,000 other photos I never look at. Three days later, we were on a ferry to one of the islands. It was windy on the deck, and I was holding onto my hat. A young woman sat down on the bench across from us. Maybe twenty-four. Sunburned nose. A big blue backpack at her feet. When the boat rocked, the backpack fell over. Something on it jingled. I looked down. Hanging off the strap was a keychain. And on it were a bunch of tiny flags. Mike saw them too. He can never keep quiet. “How many is that?” he asked her. She grinned. “Nineteen. Greece makes twenty, as soon as I get home.” Her name was Priya. She’d been traveling since she finished school. She held up the flags one by one. Laos. “I floated down a river in a giant tire.” Jordan. “I slept in the desert. I’ve never seen that many stars.” Colombia. “A little old man taught me to dance in the street.” I thought about the girl I used to be. I would have loved her. Mike told her about our rule. About the high fives. About the empty page in Athens. Priya laughed, but she was kind about it. “I’ve only ever had a few stamps,” she said. “Most of my trips never got one.” Then she said something I keep thinking about. “Nobody ever saw your stamps anyway.” Mike opened his mouth to argue. Then he closed it. She was right. For twenty-six years, our stamps had lived in a box on a shelf. Not one person outside our house had ever seen them. “These are on my bag,” Priya said. “People see them every single day.” She told us the brand was Exchange Life. One charm per country. They clip onto a keychain, and the keychain hangs on your bag. “It’s my stamps,” she said. “Just where people can see them.” That night, at our little hotel, Mike and I sat on the balcony and counted. Ireland. Norway. Egypt. Argentina. Australia. Vietnam. Belgium. Kenya. And now Greece. Nine countries. Nine sets of high fives. “We should do it,” Mike said. So we looked up Exchange Life and ordered nine flags each. One keychain for my purse. One for Mike’s backpack. They had a Buy 1 Get 1 Free sale on, so we got eighteen charms and paid for nine. The box was waiting on the porch about a week after we got home. We didn’t even go inside. We sat on the front steps and opened it right there. Mike clipped his on in the order we went, Ireland first. I did mine the same way. When we got to Greece, Mike held up his hand. Same high five. Twenty-six years later. Our neighbor waved from across the street. She had no idea what we were celebrating. The next weekend, we were at the hardware store. The man behind us in line tapped Mike on the shoulder. “Is that Norway? My grandpa came from Norway.” Mike talked to him all the way out to the parking lot. A week later, it was our waiter at dinner. She bent down to set my plate on the table and saw the flags on my purse. “Argentina! I lived there for a year. Did you eat at the steak places?” We did. We told her all about it. Then our son came home from college. He saw our two bags sitting side by side on the bench by the door. He picked up Mike’s backpack and turned the flags over in his hand. “You guys went to Egypt? I thought that was just a story.” Then he looked at us and said, “Can I come next time?” He’s coming to Japan with us in April. Priya was right. Nobody ever saw our stamps anyway. They’re still in the wooden box. We still love them. But we have a new rule now. A trip doesn’t count until it’s on the bag. https://exchange-life.com/products/country-charm-set P.S. Do this tonight. Sit down with your person and count every country you’ve been to together. Say them out loud. It’s a better night than you’d think. P.P.S. The brand is Exchange Life. One flag charm per country. You clip them onto a keychain and hang it on your bag. Start with the places you’ve already been, then add one every time you come home. P.P.P.S. Clip them on in the order you went. Then every bag tells your story from start to finish. P.P.P.P.S. There’s a lifetime color warranty, so if a charm fades or tarnishes, they replace it. There’s also a 60-day money-back guarantee. They make every charm to order, so some countries sell out and take a while to come back. Their Buy 1 Get 1 Free sale is on right now. If there are two of you, that’s the time to do it. P.P.P.P.P.S. I hope Priya made it home. I hope Greece is on her bag now. Number twenty.