Last
Thursday, at 10:15 a.m., I got up to go to the post office to pick up my mail.
The rest of the day was ruined.
I rent two
P.O. boxes, one for personal mail and one for business. (It’s complicated;
don’t ask.) On one of my two sets of car keys I keep the P.O. box keys, so I
went to the kitchen to grab that keychain. It wasn’t on the desks in my office,
so it would be on the kitchen counter, which is the other place it lives.
Not this
time. The car key without the P.O. box keys was there, but not the one I
wanted. It happens sometimes, so I wasn’t too concerned at first. A pass or two
through the house generally turns it up.
Not this
time. Two hours later, having gone through the house multiple times, searched
every surface meticulously more than once, checked in every drawer (plus the
oven, fridge and microwave), I still couldn’t find the keys. Took everything
out of the car, too, and checked under the seats. Still keyless.
They Got Up and Walked Away
Usual
protocol in a situation like this is to try to remember the last time you used
the keys and work forward from there. I knew I had them Wednesday at noon when I
picked up the mail and would have needed them to drive home. After that, I had
gone out twice, later on Wednesday, but couldn’t say which keychain I took.
Generally, I grab the first one I see and head out the door.
Possibly I
had taken the missing keychain when I already had the other set of keys in my
pocket. So I checked the last post office I visited and the other places I’d
been afterward to see if the first set had been left behind anywhere. No luck.
Came home and searched the house thoroughly several more times. Still no keys,
and no work getting done, either.
When Linda
got home that night she suggested that perhaps I had put the missing keys on
top of the car and driven off, using the other key. The next morning, when it
was light, she went all the way to the end of our road (about a quarter-mile)
to see if they were lying at the side, where they had fallen off the car. No
luck.
How Did They Ever End Up There?
At this
point, matters were getting serious, and my mental health was none too good. I
got a replacement P.O. box key for the business box and checked into the cost
of replacing the missing car key. The figure quoted was enough to spur me to
look further.
Shortly
after five on Friday afternoon, I was going through my home office one more
time. Near my desk was a pile of research materials for a project I’m working
on. I had lifted them up several times to see if the keys had fallen in among
them, with no success. This time, for some reason, I opened up the top
three-ring binder, and there, inside it, were the missing keys.
It was easy
to figure out from there. Late Wednesday afternoon, I’d opened that binder to
check a fact and left it open on the desk. An hour later, we went out to dinner
for my birthday, and I must have taken the missing keys. Returning home, I
probably tossed them on the desk and they landed on the open binder; closing it
while cleaning up the desktop a while later, I must not have seen the keys
inside. What a relief to have them back — and without a supernatural explanation.
