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They're around here somewhere The Keys to an Orderly Life -- Missing!By Rick Horowitz
I like to think of myself as a man of patterns. You can call them habits if you like, or even ruts; I won't be insulted. I'd still rather call them patterns -- certain ways I try to impose a bit of structure, even a smidgen of predictability, on my tiny corner of a random world. So why can't I find my key ring? There are only two places I ever put my key ring -- on my desk, and on the nightstand next to the bed. When I can't find my keys on the desk, I always find them on the nightstand. When I can't find my keys on the nightstand, I always find them on my desk -- or on the kitchen table. (Every once in a while, I put them on the kitchen table.) Which means that, on the rare occasions that I misplace my keys, it's only a momentary inconvenience. I check the two -- OK, three -- places I always put them, and there they are. But not this morning. This morning my keys are gone -- an entire pocket-jangling, fist-filling key ring's worth of locks I suddenly can't open. Or close. Or both. I don't have my key to the front door, or my key to the back door, which makes it difficult to leave the house -- assuming I'll want to get back in, that is. And assuming I don't want to leave the place wide open to passing bands of pirates. I also don't have my key to the garage, which in the general scheme of things hardly matters, since I also don't have my key to the car, so even if I could get into the garage, there's nothing I could drive out of it. At the moment, that's small consolation. I also don't have the key for the lock on my computer bag, which is a useful thing to have for all those times when I'm not getting on a plane and I'm actually allowed to lock the thing. (The computer bag, not the plane.) There's also a key to a bicycle lock, which would be another useful thing to have if I ever decide to get back on my bike -- or more precisely, if I ever decide to get on my bike and then to get off my bike somewhere else. And then there are my mystery keys -- they're perfectly vital, every last one of them, for unlocking something; it's simply a matter of remembering what that something is, and for that matter, whether there's even the slightest chance I haven't tossed, sold or moved away from that particular something years ago. You wouldn't take keys like those off your key ring, would you? Neither did I. And now they're missing, too. I've gone back over the standard locations, and even under the standard locations. It's only logical that one of those three -- OK, four -- places (every once in a while, I put the keys on the dining-room table) would cave in under the pressure and just cough them up. But no -- they're hanging tough. I've had no choice but to expand my search. There are piles of paper on my desk. Could my keys have slid off one of the piles -- off one of the piles and off the desk and into the wastebasket right alongside? Unlikely, but worth a look. No such luck. There were newspapers on the kitchen table. Could my keys have somehow buried themselves deep inside one of the sports sections and been carried off unwittingly to my recyclable-newspaper pile? I don't want my keys recycled -- I just want them returned! Now I'm looking through the kitchen trash bag -- poking through old coffee grounds, peering into napkin-stuffed boxes of french fries from Wendy's. It's not as if I'm always throwing my keys out with the leftover french fries from Wendy's. (Or ever.) On the other hand, the keys have to be in the house somewhere, don't they? Unless they're outside the house somewhere. So now I'm checking the back door. Maybe, just maybe, after I unlocked the back door when I came home last night, I forgot to take the keys inside with me -- left them dangling in the keyhole, or dropped them on the ground. But they're not in the keyhole. Or on the ground. Unless they were, but they're not anymore. Unless, that is, somebody found my keys in the keyhole or on the ground and made off with them. Somebody, or something. I like to think of myself as a man of patterns. But desperate times call for unconventional measures. I may have the squirrels in for a little chat. Posted 11/29/03.
Talk to your neighbors -- especially the human ones -- about "Rick's."
You shouldn't have to go through this kind of thing alone.
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Rick Horowitz
