Jaci Dawn

Since everyone enjoyed that last confession, let me tell you about keys. Specifically automobile keys.

It isn’t simply that I lose my keys, but… well, I lose my keys. Or I lock them inside the car. You know that dreadful sound of a car door clicking shut just as you realize your keys are still in the ignition? Yeah, that sound.

People just shake their heads when I start looking for my keys.

I really try to keep my keys in one place and I try to remember to remove them from the ignition. I swear I do. There’s some synapses missing in my brain function that causes me to overlook keys.

It got so bad that Don went out and purchased one of those magnetic key safes where I could store my spare key under the bumper. There isn’t a lot of real metal on my truck which is why we chose the bumper: it’s real metal.

Once, I lost all my keys except my car key. The house key, Don’s car key, all the work keys. I had to borrow keys for three weeks. Then one day I opened up the top cupboard in my cubicle to get something out and there they were. Right where I’d put them.

Once, I set my keys on top of the car while I loaded kids into car seats. Don was driving. We never did find those keys.

In the summer, when I leave the center window open on my truck, I can always climb into the bed and use a hanger to retrieve keys from the steering column. I’ve done that. In a dress.

It is especially embarrassing at work when I have to ask someone else to lock up because I just left my keys in my truck.

The last time I locked my keys in my truck, I wasn’t worried: I had that key safe. That key safe had saved my bacon several times and I knew right where it was located under the bumper. Sure, my hands would get dirty when I reached under there to retrieve it, but I’d have a key.

Except it was gone. GONE. Dun Rund Off. How the heck does that happen? One heavy duty magnet that didn’t even slide and it was just GONE.

I stood by my truck and considered crying. Everyone came out and patted my shoulder while I called my husband. Someone mentioned AAA.

DOH! I have Triple A! That’s WHY I have AAA. So I called and everyone left the parking lot. I paced around my car, talking to the woman on the other end. It would be 90 minutes before they could get to me. I was alone in the parking lot in the rain and it was getting dark.

I said I wanted to talk to my husband because surely he could drive to where I was in 30 minutes. He’d be ticked, but… I stopped by the passenger door and clicked my phone off.

I dialed Don. Or got halfway into dialing because something caught my eye.

The passenger door was unlocked.

Oh.

I drove home and thought up a dozen different lies to tell everyone at work about how AAA rescued me. In the end, I just confessed. It made a better story, anyway.

And that’s just the car keys.

There was the time in the early 1980’s that my girlfriend & I had to wake up her husband and con him into removing the window from my backdoor so I could get back into the house before Donald came back home from Portland & job hunting. My friend’s husband had the glass out and was reaching in to turn the knob when the alarm went off.

My bedside alarm, telling me it was time to wake up and meet Don at the bus depot.

At least Don got the job. He was not impressed about the back door.

My brain is just not keyed into keys.