Sooner or later, you’re going to have to find a way to keep track of your keys. This is a task for which humans are not inherently well suited. Locks, from an evolutionary standpoint, make a lot of sense; they keep predators out. But keys aren’t really good for anything; they can’t protect your young, they can’t be used to hunt or gather. Pretty much all they’re good for is opening locks.

As such, they fade from the forefront of a person’s consciousness. Though they may come in handy later, they are not, by definition, essential right now (unless right now is when you’re standing in front of a lock, in which case right now is later).

Point: when you’re walking around the mall, looking for a decent polo shirt to wear to work on Fridays to replace the one you found in a parking lot three years ago, there are plenty of important things with which to occupy your brain. For some, shopping is a relaxing, low-intensity affair. For me, it requires tremendous concentration and commitment.

Some of the things that go through my mind while I’m considering a purchase:

1) Do I need this?
2) Is this the cheapest one of this?
3) Hmm…look at that display hanger which is interesting. Let’s go find out how it works.
4) Do you remember the first promotional commercials for “Growing Pains,” before the show debuted? The one where Mike is sitting on the top bunk of his bed and a stream of liquid comes shooting up? Man.
5) What’s this shirt I’m holding? Am I holding this for someone?

As you can see, even with considerable exertion, it’s hard to stay focused on the task at hand, which, as I said, involves buying a shirt. And so, the thought, “I wonder if my keys are still in the pants pocket where I put them,” does not occupy a high post.

And so, an hour later, the shirt and its receipt comfortably nestled in the bottom of a Gap bag, I find that the keys have vanished. They are not in my pocket. But I put them in my pocket. But they are not there.

I check the pocket again. Nope. Other pockets, ditto. Gap bag, no. Clearly the keys are not on my person.

I check the pocket again, hoping by some inverse application of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle that the keys will appear there just because I’m looking for them. They do not.

Now, the mall is a big mall, as are all malls here in Minnesota. Not so big that it has a rollercoaster, but big enough to have at least two of every kind of store. Oh, if only keys were like puppies; I could just call out their names and they’d come running back to me.

Here, Toyota! Come on, American Lock Co.

But they never came. And people were looking at me. So I stopped and just went back to all the stores I’d been in, asking them if they’d seen my -puppies- keys.

They had not. Nor had the mall’s guest services desk. I checked my pockets again, for good measure, but it was no use. They were gone.

Fortunately, my mom lives nearby, and she drove over with spare keys. I was home in fifteen minutes, unshaken, but resolute; I would not allow this to happen again. There were a few solutions:

1) Keep track of the keys. A keychain that attaches to my belt buckles will help.
2) Make a tremendous number of copies of the keys, so that there’s always a good probability one will be close at hand.

And then there’s the third (and best) solution: get a puppy for every key, and join the two using some foolproof method (scotch tape might work). Then, name the puppies according to the key that they are attached to; for example, the puppy that carries your car key could be called “Car” or “Mustang” (if you have a Mustang). The puppy that carries the key to your living quarters could be “Home” or “Apartment.”

Brilliant!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2004 at 11:09 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.