It's Only Funny Now

One day in late January I lost my car key (FOB; REMOTE KEY; KEYLESS ENTRY; the thing that opens the door).  My mind raced back and forth to everything I had done and everywhere I had been the last two days.  “The thing has to be here in the house. How else could I have driven home?” I begged Jack for an answer. He stood bewildered with his head shaking side to side.

Meet Helen Reddy

Over the next few days we turned the furniture upside down, checked every pair of jeans we ever wore, searched every coat pocket even if we didn’t use the coat, vexation does that to me. I become frantic, thinking I’m losing my mind.

On a warm sunny day I searched the backyard grumbling and kicking sticks. I continued to use Jack’s key, and kept my eyes peeled for wherever I might have dropped the fob.

FOB is the correct usage. 

One day, out of nowhere, Jack met me in the hallway with matching keys, one in one hand and the other in the other hand. “Look what I found in my coat pocket. I must have picked up your key and then later picked up my key.”

“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Now I won’t worry about my brain,” I smiled with relief.

Not a month, not a week, but two days later Jack could not find his car key fob to my car, Helen Reddy. “No,” I sputtered not angrily but bewildered, “You stood in that hallway not two days ago with two keys in your hands. How could one have disappeared?”

I grabbed my purse. There in the side pocket I felt my fob. "At least we have one," I spouted.  

Immediately, we retraced every step we could imagine. No (expletive) fob.

Days began to pass and we continually, like we had the previous weeks, looked, searched, and dug through drawers in vain.

The next day we were all three awake before sunrise, but two of us sat and thought about nothing much, while Murphy having been inside during two rainy days was ready to run. The sun began to warm the east side of our house and rainbow prisms appeared on one wall. Spring was returning.

“Let’s go to Press and Plow for breakfast,” Jack suggested.

“Yes, and let’s take Murphy with us so we can go to Ruby Grant Park and let him run in the mud.”

“Are you sure you want a dirty dog?” Jack inquired.

I could only laugh. “If we don’t bundle up and take him to the park after breakfast then we will get nothing done today except play with Murphy.” Jack laughed and we headed to the car without a key! No FOB key! How can that be?

I realized at last that Jack and I were suffering from ‘the gray sickness.’ I had heard women at the Miami Country club refer to ‘the gray sickness’ when they lost something, which seemed fairly common in my young mind. I would certainly never suffer from that disease.

We stood in sad silence. Frantically, we began to reach into pockets, scatter the items on the counter top, and I dug through my purse. “Ha. Found it in a different pocket. Let’s go before we misplace this one again.”

I ate my entire croissant stuffed with crispy thick bacon and scrambled eggs, with a side of avocado and tomatoes, while Jack only ate his eggs and half of a pancake. We sipped on hot tea and coffee letting the sun warm the air. Relaxed, how sweet.

Our romp at the park refreshed us. Thirty-seven degrees in the morning sun and light wind from the southwest worked magic on our souls.

Home by 10:00 and ready for the day. First, clean mud foot Murphy before entering the house, which I did, but Jack began to look through his tool chest. I understood. He was looking for the key fob.

With Murphy cleaner we once again searched the car and everything cubby and bag in it. We were on a mission, either locate the black fob or drive to the dealership and purchase two more keys if not three.

By 12:30 no cotton-pickin’ ear-scratching fob had appeared. We were truly distraught.

Later, I took a bag of 50+ pencils and pens (found during the cleaning of drawers) to be donated to Bridges and placed them in the front car seat. I memorized the code to get in, just in case I do something stupid! I stood beside Helen Reddy and said out loud, “Please tell me where the key is?”

Nothing.

Jack’s heavy coat, thick enough to walk a dog in an Arctic blast, lay on the car hood. As I picked up the coat to go in the house, Helen Reddy whispered, “Unlock me.”

I threw the coat on the workbench, walked back and locked the car. Picking up the heavy black coat I walked back over to the car, placed my hand on the car door and like magic it unlocked.

Rushing through the house I nearly fell on Jack as I threw the coat at him and said, “Find hidden key in there.” Buried deep in small side pocket a black fob appeared. No words were exchanged about how many times we had searched our coat pockets.

By 12:40, we held two car keys. Mine now is on a key chain. We laughed and sighed in relief. It looks like we will have to learn how to live with “the gray sickness.”

 

*The ‘gray sickness’ is a memory I have from my summers working at the Miami Country Club. Several of the women suffered from the ‘gray sickness’ when they would misplace  billfolds, house keys, cash, a blouse they should be wearing in the clubhouse over their bra tops, and more. I vowed at age fifteen I would certainly never suffer from that disease. In the midst of our angst over the lost fob I remembered that Rose Pratt named it the ‘gray sickness’ that comes when a person’s hair coloring matches it. Others who experienced the same disease were Lois Garwood, Gladys Wetzel, Lib Lillard, and Helen Stapp, who was a blonde.

**Doggone FOB. After I wrote the first draft it occurred to me that I could not use the word KEY and have the story make sense. Any reader would say, “Go to the nearest box store and have several copies made of the master car key.” I wish I could. I realized that I had a problem as did the story. Will it change my word usage from car key to FOB, I don’t know.

***Writing the story using the incorrect vocabulary can prove embarrassingly humorous.  In an earlier story used a word incorrectly: When we ran down the streets our thongs would sometimes fall of us or cause us to fall on the asphalt. Depending on the age of the reader this may or may not make sense. (Thank you for laughing and correcting my language, Dede Tebeck Sparkman, RIP)