So. This happened. A couple of months ago (yes, months), I lost my keys. The ring in question had my car key and two other keys on it. I had it in my hand when I walked into the house (I had to, I had driven home) and the next morning, it wasn’t anywhere that I normally put my keyring. Since I had almost immediately put my stuff down and gone down to the basement, there were a limited number of places it could be, I thought.
But okay, fine. I needed to get to work. I grabbed the car key off Pat’s keyring (I know it was his – it was on the dresser where he puts it, and had his usual Superman fob and one more key on it), put it on a spare keyring and went about my day. Over the next few days I looked everywhere for that blasted key, in places both obvious and impossible. No key. I was ready to tear my hair out. Meanwhile, the truck key (we only have one of those) disappeared, too, so I was looking for it at the same time. No keys.
Two weeks later while I was sorting the laundry hamper (I had done a quick load the previous week, and not gone to the bottom of the hamper) I found the truck key near the bottom. A few items of clothing deeper, I found my keyring. Well, part of my keyring. It had the two non-car keys on it. My car key was missing. Now, bear in mind that it was on a large split ring, and as it is a thick key, was not easy to get off. Yet, there we were, with no car key on my keyring. I admit to being mystified. How it got in the laundry hamper in the first place was already strange….the truck key I could kind of understand. It would have fallen out of Pat’s pocket when he put the pants in the wash. But my keys? And to find them without my car key on the ring? Weird.
Pat and I continued to use the lone car key, trading it back and forth as necessary. The key did not turn up. Pat was not using his keyring, since he didn’t have the car key on it, and didn’t happen to need the other key that was on it. Apparently, it, too, disappeared sometime during this time.
Fast forward to this weekend. Pat and Aaron went to the store Saturday morning. Aaron saw something glinting under the edge of the seat and fished it out. It was Pat’s keyring. Except it had the other car key on it. The missing key.
Pat swears he didn’t find my key and put it on there, and I believe him, since that would have involved a lot of “Hey, I found your key! It was in such-and-such a place!” and a certain amount of gloating about being the one to find it. And it wasn’t any of the kids, as no one borrowed the car at any point. (No one really wants to. It’s a tiny, older Chevy Aveo with manual transmission that has been dubbed Mom’s golf cart.)
So how the h-e-double-toothpicks did that key get on Pat’s ring, and why was it in the car? The kids maintain that dad did it without thinking about it, but I don’t know, because with the fuss I made over losing the key in the first place, he probably would have thought to say something, even if it was to rub it in. Plus, he’d have said he had it so we could stop trading the other key back and forth.
I suppose it’s a mystery that will remain. File it under “just another day in the Wolfinbarger household.”
Jane W. Wolfinbarger 