My (extra)ordinary object has to be my monkey pen-topper. I started using it five years ago because I was always losing pens. I would go through a pack of 12 in a week because I was so careless with them. Besides being wasteful, I never had a pen when I needed one. I added a pen topper because I thought it would make my pens a more valuable and beloved object - and I couldn't forget my pen if it was looking right at me. Also, when I left my old job at Zingerman's Deli, my coworkers threw me a party (a pink princess party, on my request), and gave me school supplies - my monkey topper was among them.
I've taken that damn pen to formal meetings with mayors, to exams, to client meetings - almost no one has ever commented. I don't know if they don't notice or they don't know what to say. It has a lot of meaning to me because it reminds me that wherever I am, I am set apart. Somehow, the quality of difference has always been a critical part of my self-concept.
The monkey itself is a little brown guy with a broad smile and an extremely calm expression. He's sitting comfortably on the ground with his tail wrapped around his legs and one arm draped over his right knee. He is utimately relaxed and relaxing, and has a cheery red fez (or Tarbouche) with a yellow tassel. Because he is a cheap plastic thingee, he is alternately shiny and matte in some places. There is a spot on his back that is really shiny and I like to rub it when I'm nervous. He's only about an inch high, and lives in a particular pen pocket in my red bag. I get a lot of comfort from him, and when I take him out, I feel like I've officially entered a space or meeting. It's like flipping over an "open" sign - I'm here and listening.
I've gone through several of these things over the past five years - when I first started using them, I was much more nervous than I am now, and I used to exert pressure on his forward-leaning head. Eventually, the neck split, and his little head would bob back and forth. This gave me a strange comfort.
I have thought about switching pens in the last five years (from Bic Crystal to something a little more even), but there is not another pen I like that will fit my topper, so I've just stuck to my old Crystal pens.
Also, my friend wondered aloud at the racist undertones of my monkey-man, but the monkey-with-fez theme is a direct cultural connection to the organ grinding monkeys of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Fez itself is a bit more problematic - originally Greek, co-opted by the Ottoman Empire as it conquered Greece, and strangely used as a uniform piece to identify Colonial troops in South Asia and Africa. I have decided not to self-censure, but to wait until people challenge me - I'm actually really looking forward to talking with people about their (positive or negative) association with my pen topper!