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The Lost Art of Finding Keys

April 25th, 2007

TheKeySM.jpg

It was a day of car shuffling. Nothing like a dumping of heavy white stuff followed by a day of warm sunny weather to encourage driveway puttering.

I stayed out there most of the day, in and out of the garage, maneuvering our Yukon and a visiting Chrysler Sebring to make way for a lonely guy’s Saturday snow-clearing chores. Lisa had escaped to Florida to visit college crony Rhonda Pigot, who she insists on calling Rae for reasons unknown to me.

When the driveway was immaculate, I took on the garage, sweeping and shuffling stuff around. My loneliness for the time being was kept at bay. I even got into ‘the mood’ and wrote a column right there on the garage-porch we built last summer. It was the porch’s first spring function and words flowed like the spring runoff under our giant copper beech tree.

Yes, things were going smoothly during Lisa’s absence. Youngest daughter, Layla, who seemed to enjoy the novelty of ‘Mum’s away’, was taking care of the groceries and feeding me with surprising regularity. She was heading out into her 17-year-old’s world that evening and I actually had the house to myself. A rarity indeed.

After dinner I did the dishes, my usual look-at-what-I-do-around-here act, and reflected on the options for the evening ahead. I could sort bits and pieces in the tool room, fix that sink in the downstairs bathroom or just sit back in the living room to hear what Randy Bachman had to play on Vinyl Tap, his weekly Saturday night CBC Radio show.

Before getting started, I decided to take the redesigned Sebring for a spin. If it performed anything like its sporty new styling, I was obviously in for some fun. There was a problem though. The key to the Sebring that was conveniently blocking everything in the driveway was among the missing.

I looked everywhere. A fine time for Lisa to be away. She’d find the key and then go on about opening my eyes when I look for something. No matter, I had the key a few hours ago and I didn’t leave the yard. It stood to reason that the errant necessity was somewhere on the property.

I ransacked the house in vain then visualized it dangling off the shutter of the neighbour’s kitchen window after rocketing across the yard during the morning snowblower blitz. There were many false sightings as I checked the obvious and the not-so-obvious. The refrigerator, the bottom of my sock drawer and even a toolbox I had not opened for weeks were searched. Finding those keys became an obsession.

I went out to the Sebring I couldn’t drive and looked under the seat a half-dozen more times. I began to envision my call to the nice guy at Chrysler’s office in Toronto to announce he had to take time from his busy day to express-post a spare key to Boy Wonder here in Halifax. No one likes a key loser, and that is what I had morphed into with the keyless Sebring mocking my mobility for the rest of the weekend.

Growing up, car keys were a regular topic of conversation. In 1965, when Ford introduced keys that would work no matter which way you inserted them, the novelty got us through a few family meals. Imagine a world where upside down keys didn’t exist!

When keys to Dad’s car, or one of his two trucks, went astray my mother E.D. would inevitably be summoned. We’d all stand there helplessly and watch her go. If she didn’t find them within a few minutes, we’d hear her muttering a prayer to Saint Antoine, the patron saint of lost items. Then Bam! Mum would surface with the keys and life was good again. It never failed; E.D. and St-Antoine had the art of finding keys figured out all right.

But my big night home alone was turning into failure. I tried to concentrate on one of my mindless pursuits, but the lost key would haunt me into tearing off on another fruitless search and more false sightings.

Finally it was time to go to the big guy himself, Saint Antoine. Even though I felt like a bit of a taker, I figured he might just help me out, especially since E.D. still engages his services on a regular basis. My obsession with The Key had to be satisfied. I came right out and asked the good Saint-of-finding-things where the key to the Sebring was.

Nothing happened, there were no cracks of thunder or flashes of lightning. The room didn’t shake either. I wandered the house looking for a miracle in all the same places.

After a half-hour of waiting for my miracle, I decided to go to bed, just give up, call it a day and put an end to my misery. Just accept that the key was gone and get prepared to get the spare key from Mr. Chrysler at the end of my grounded weekend.

Lost in thought, I reached to turn out the bedroom light. Where was that key?

As the light went out, a glimpse of it sitting on the top shelf of Lisa’s dresser burned itself into my brain. A classic false sighting perhaps, but I flicked the light back on just in case and there it was, the Sebring key, neatly tucked in beside Lisa’s junk jewelry box.

I was elated, but a little spooked too. How did it get there? Lisa had been away for days and I had moved the car that morning.

But Saint Antoine? Now that’s another matter.

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