In the Great Unknown

There was a fleeting moment when I thought to myself, “This might not end well.”  Nonetheless, I handed my keys to my son.  He was going to get the mail.

 

And we never saw those keys again.

 

There are faint memories of the keys, overlapping reports of where they might have been before they were reported Missing in Action.

 

But nobody knows for sure what happened.

 

I do have one son who is making up terrific stories of what may have happened, and some of them are believable.

 

I have one other son who flinches any time the topic comes up because he’s terrified this was his fault and he’s the most responsible person he knows.

 

So I’ve resolved that they will not be found and the fact that they are missing isn’t any one person’s fault.

 

(Although it’s most assuredly not my fault.)

 

(Even though I gave my son my keys, against my better instincts.)

 

I spent about 36 hour without keys at all, and I tip my hat to the people of the world who depend on others for their transportation.  Because I just couldn’t do it.

 

Car Keys = My Independence.  Turns out.

 

Locksmiths promise lots of things in their ads online.

24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year they promise, in their bold letters and links.

 

And then they don’t answer their phones on a Sunday afternoon.

 

“24/7/365 if it doesn’t interfere with any single thing in my life,” is what it could say.

 

I have keys again.  A nice array of them: keys to my front door, to the mailbox, and to the door as well as the ignition to the car. It’s possible that the key ring also held random access to places I’ve worked in the last fifteen years.

 

(If you’re reading this and you gave me your keys, I hereby apologize and promise that I never intended to do anything in your office after hours.  And I’m banking on nobody knowing which random key belonging to which random former employer.  Please do not send me a bill to re-key your office complex.)

 

Honda gave me a remote that opens the sliding doors on the sides.  The locksmith did not.  I am now officially embarrassed to see that a remote control had become an integral part of my vehicular access.

 

Okay, so I can do without the side doors opening at my command.  But for real?  I have to manually lock this thing?  I’ve never done that in my life.  Might as well confiscate my air conditioning and power windows and windshield fluid.  This all feels so very philistine and I am ridiculously spoiled.

 

Losing one’s keys is a very expensive mistake.  Let’s just say, three digits, no decimals, first number was five.

 

I have decided this is the price I will pay to find the old set of keys.  Figuring they’ll show up anytime now.

 

* * *

 

It is a new day.  Tyler has found my keys.  He does not understand why I am not unspeakably happy over this.  Mostly, I’m just not speaking.

(They were in the basket downstairs, tucked in with the Wii Remotes in the family room.  Go figure.)

Tricia Lott Williford

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  1. My son has lost the truck keys exactly one time; three weeks ago. We found them in the Wii remote basket in the living room. I wish I had known your story sooner, I would have suggested this. (He’s 18)

  2. Well, y’know… Game remotes, vehicle door remotes, there’s a pattern…. 🙂 glad you know they’re safely in your realm.

  3. I can totally relate to this. We “lost” our keys the day we moved into our new house, which also had the only keys to my husband’s work truck on them. He insisted that he had laid them on the kitchen counter, but I didn’t pay much attention to that because he misplaces things quite often. It wasn’t until he was getting frantic that I started looking for them. Our sweet angel of a daughter insisted she didn’t know what happened to them. After several hours of searching, they were found behind the door in her new bedroom in a little basket that she had been playing with. You don’t realize how much you depend on those things until you don’t have them anymore. I guess on the plus side you have a back-up now, and you can remotely open your doors again! 🙂

  4. AAA has been our saving grace! Join and you’ll be so glad that you did!

  5. You know when you *will* be unspeakably happy? On another day when that expensive set becomes the back-up that saves the day, your sanity and so much time and hassle. Yes, I’ve been there, done that. If I was a paid researcher, I think I’d like to find out if (as I lean toward believing) there is a direct correlation between creativity and and a light grip on the material “stuff” of our lives: keys, glasses, id, wallet, purse, pacifiers, lip gloss, jewelry, credit cards, did I say keys? : ) When I’m wandering around a Target parking lot for ten minutes on a snowy day because I can’t find where I parked my car (and I long since lost the awesome beeper/keyless thing that I used to fire up to find it), I like to think so. I’m glad you found your keys AND have a back-up now…and I relate to this post on a lifetime of levels.

  6. Oh my goodness, I just laughed out loud. I am so sorry Tricia, that I laughed, but I had to. This is SO something that would happen to us. Only – I am the one always loosing my keys.

  7. Sounds like someplace where I might find my keys… if they were logically displaced by one of the three men in this house… (More likely, they’ll be in the freezer, on the dryer, or somewhere… hidden deep on my desk.)

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