Day 275: I am Lost and Found Part 2

     One aspect of living in a house built in 1910 is that all the doors are identical.  Growing up there, my family and I used a skeleton key to lock our bedroom doors, but the problem was there was only one key.  One morning, I lost the key.  To this day, I still don’t remember what I did to lose it.  All I remember is the dread of telling my parents, the same type of dread you feel when you have to admit you shattered your mom’s favorite decorative plate or the dread you feel when report card day rolls around and you have to tell your parents what your grades are.  There was no way I could hide this from them though, so I mustered up all the courage my preteen self  could and told them I lost the key.

     “You lost the key?”  My mother was not amused.  “How did you do that?”

I fumbled through my excuses and we went upstairs to look in the general areas where I thought I had lost the metal key.  We checked under beds, in between furniture, and behind the hall bookcase.  When we ran out of spots where it could have fallen, Momma had my dad check the upstairs heating grate on the floor in case the key had fallen through the gaps in the metal bars.  After checking and rechecking with a flashlight and no success, we stopped the search.

     We still needed a key, though, so my dad drove the family to an antique shop the next day and bought another skeleton key.

     “Are you sure it will work?” I asked. 

     “All skeleton keys are the same.  And when the other one turns up, we’ll have two.”

     “I don’t think we’re going to find it.”

     “It could turn up soon enough.”

     “Soon” is a relative term.  The lady at the McDonald’s window usually says you’ll get your food soon.  You could be intending to get the oil changed in your car, soon. When you were little, your parents said that yes, you could get a pet, soon, which usually meant never.  That’s what happened with our first skeleton key.  We all still kept an eye out for it, but as the years came and went, it never showed up, not even after we moved and emptied the entire house.  There’s a running joke in our family that if we lost something, we say, “It’s probably with the key,” which of course we hope is not true.  I suspect that trolls took the key through the grate and stored it with their collection of left socks.

~~~~~

     I am always misplacing things.  I’ll put something down and forget where it is by the time I get back.  I’ll walk into a room and forget why I went in there.  When I’m looking for something, I’ll say, “It made sense at the time to put it there.”  I worry that if I’m this absent-minded now, I’ll be hopeless when I’m old.  I’m certain I’ll have Alzheimer’s disease.

     Despite this fact, my family entrusted me with the TV remote.  Being the official remote handler and manager of recording shows and movies is a role that I unintentionally adopted.  I was the one who ended up fast-warding through commercials the most, so I kept it with me until it became my duty.  The job eventually expanded to recording movies and TV shows.  My family must have known I could handle the responsibility.  Like any job, this comes with risks.  I can’t tell you how many times I have lost the remote.  I’d take it with me to take clothes out of the dryer and forgot I left it on the washer.  I’d leave it on the counter when I went into the kitchen.  One time I left it on my bed, and the sheets covered it up.  I probably spent a good half hour looking for it.  You get the picture.

     One winter evening, back when I used blank VHS tapes to record our shows, we had arrived home after doing grocery shopping.  Without bothering to take my coat off, I quickly double-checked to make sure everything had taped properly and then went back outside to help unload the van.  When it was time to settle down, no remote was in sight.

     My mother sighed, “Where did you put it, Brittany?”

     “I thought I left it on the TV stand.  I could have left it on the kitchen counter.”  After a few fruitless minutes of searching, I came back saying with despair, “I can’t find it!”

     “All right, Brittany, calm down,” my dad reassured.  In times of crisis, he always has a level head.  “Let’s retrace your steps.  Where is the last place you remember being?  Look everywhere, even in places that don’t make sense.”

     I followed his advice as best I could, but we were not making progress.  Just when I had given up hope…

     “I found it!” he yelled.

     “Where was it?” the unanimous question was asked.

     “In your coat pocket.”

     I gave him a puzzled look.

     He held up my plum suede-like coat and demonstrated where the remote was.  “You must have put it there when you went outside to help us.”

     Grateful that my dad was smart enough to look there, I put it where it rightfully belonged.