Honey? Where Are My Keys?

5/1/07 – Honey, where are my car keys? My socks? Have you seen my fountain pen? No, the one with the BLUE ink?

Why do guys always think it's someone else's responsibility to keep track of and track down their personal belongings? We start when we are very young, don't we ladies? HEY MOM?!?! Where are my sneakers?? My kids always ask us the whereabouts of their underwear, Nintendo handhelds, homework, etc. Our response is usually that they have to keep track of these things themselves. Individual responsibility.

So, that brings us to the present. I have just found a key chain that I have been looking for almost a week. Important keys. Keys to my car. My home. My garage. EVERYTHING. For almost a week, my car has been sitting idle in front of the house, looking almost sad that I could be so careless. Maybe the car remembered the days when its keys to the fast lane were always in the tray by the front door. ALWAYS.

Except for the times when they are not. When I leave them in my pants and they end up in the hamper. Or when they fall into the sofa, to be found at a later hour, cold and scared in a dark cave of lost M & M's, hot wheels, and dust bunnies. Or when I set them down in the bathroom, family room, stove, or anywhere else they are NOTsupposed to be.

The tray at the front door calls out to me...whispering..."You would save hours every month looking for those keys if you just remembered to put them...in the TRAAAAAAAAY."

This time I had to REALLY look for these keys. I did everything but tear up the floorboards and look in the walls. I looked in our cars (the Buick keys were missing, but the doors were unlocked for some reason). If the Buick was unlocked, maybe it would make sense that the keys fell under the seats or underneath some old fast food wrappers. Nope. The cupboard or the fridge? Nope. Under all the beds? Even the dog's? Nope.

I had exhausted every possibility. I was resigned that I had lost the keys somewhere else. The Post Office? The mall? A restaurant? Maybe they WERE gone forever. Not as bad as losing your credit cards, but still frustrating nonetheless.

Just when I was ready to give up, I made one more search of one of the cars and there they were...the most beautifil sight all morning next to my Beauty's lovely face--THE KEYS!! They were under a sweatshirt I SWORE I had already looked under.

So what is the moral of this story?

Always put your keys in the SAME SPOT. And just when you think you have looked under every rock...look again or under new rocks. Another common mistake that books could be written about is the color or shape phenomenon. Ever convince yourself that the wallet you are looking for HAS to be in the blue jacket? You convince yourself to the point that you don't even entertain the idea that you could be wrong and that the RED jacket is the correct choice. Or ever find yourself SO sure that you dropped your wallet at the restaurant that you forget you stopped at 3 other places on your way home? Or the checkbook you KNOW is in the kitchen so you don't bother looking anywhere else? We all do this, right?

We get stubborn. We huff and we puff and we expect EVERYONE around us to know where the keys or the socks or the Nintendos are. Look under that sweatshirt. Yes, the one you SWEAR you already checked 5 times. I bet it's there.

Your keys are out there. Somewhere. And what a sweet reunion it will be when you find them. It always feels so good, doesn't it?