My Kingdom for a keychain
You may tell me “no, not me!”, but most of us human beings experience this anguish on a daily basis. No. I’m not talking about making ends meet. I’m talking about finding the keys!
Those of us who don’t find the keys, never, ever find them on first intention. We don’t find them when we want to leave the house, we don’t find them when we want to enter the house, we don’t even find them when we have them in the palm of our hand.
The most common case: one comes home in a hurry because he is hungry, in a hurry because he has to go to the bathroom or simply in a hurry because he is a person who lives in a hurry. You go in, you throw the key anywhere… and you can’t find it anymore!
There is a previous situation: the more you are in a hurry, either to go to the bathroom, either because you are hungry or because you are in a hurry, it is not so easy to find the keys to enter your house. As you get closer, the question turns in your head like a merry-go-round without a brake on a sloping ground: “where do I have the keys?” The search begins: If it is a wallet, or any other type of container, you will check 32 times until you realize that they are not in that place.
You go to the pockets. All pockets. They are also not in the pockets. Did I lose the keys? Did I leave them at work? Did they bother me on the trip? Did I eat them with lunch without realizing it?
A thread of cold perspiration like a polar bear’s betrothal kiss runs down your back: Without keys you will not be able to enter your house. And as you begin to check your wallet and pockets for the seventeenth time and mentally go through all your activities for the day, you are also thinking of strategies: who has the other set of keys? How many hours am I going to have to wait for my closest relative to arrive, be it wife, son, mother-in-law, or any type of pet, to be able to enter? Why did I leave a copy of the house keys with a trusted friend who lives 65.4 kilometers from home?by gravel road and cornice?
Also, until you are sure that you do not have the keys, you can call or send a message to your partner for two reasons: one. You don’t want me to answer: “Check it out, fool. You always do the same. You worry us all and you have it in your pants pocket”. two. Because you know that most likely your partner can’t find their keys at this time either and is not in the mood to know that neither of you has the keys to get back into the house.
This situation, unless you have effectively lost the key, always ends the same: after sweating everything, on the final attempt, number 43, You find the keys in the first place you looked. Why didn’t you find them in the previous 43 attempts? Did the invisible hand of the market hide it from you? No. It just happens that the keys know that you are looking for them, and the very stupid ones hide.
The other serious problem occurs when trying to leave the house. You entered, you threw them anywhere, hours passed, maybe even one day, and now you have to leave. And you start looking: in the little hook you bought at the craft fair to hang the keys and be able to find them… they are not there. On the hook there are all kinds of keys, some of which are even unknown what they are for, but the ones you are looking for are not there.
And the adventure begins: you lift the cushions off the sofa, put your hand between the pillow and the slipcover, run your hand over the kitchen counter, check any flat surface where a set of keys can rest… and nothing. You begin the exploration at ground level: under the sofa, under the bed, under the refrigerator, under the bathroom counter, under the dog, under the pothos, Where are the keys?!!
Now you enter the despair-insanity phase. You look in places where no one would leave a key: the bathtub, the bidet, the refrigerator, the freezer, inside the washing machine, inside the pots and pans, in the cookie jar, the cat’s mouth… And after going through the pockets of all your jackets one by one, coats and pants from the closet, you also check the pockets of all your partner’s clothes. Where are the keys?!!
This process also entails a violent loss of your self-esteem with thoughts such as: “I’m a fool” (not exactly with that word), “why did I buy the hook from the craft fair to hang the keys if I never hang the keys? ” “Why did I spend a fortune on a smart cell phone, if it’s not smart enough to tell me where the hell I put my damn keys?” “I have to change my life, move to the countryside, live in a shack with no door”…
Extreme resource: garbage. That is if you haven’t already removed it. But if you didn’t take it out, there’s no other choice: to rummage through the garbage. And not once: two, three… you touch things you never imagined, unrecognizable textures and aromas from the last days of the victim. Any. Where are the keys?!!
Until, after sweating more than a barbecue who lacked the assistant in the middle of the heat wave and during a power outage… you find the keys!! Where? There. There where you passed 72 times and you didn’t see them. How is it possible? Easy: it is a biblical mandate. When god expelled Adam from paradise he told him: “you will earn bread with the sweat of your brow, but you will sweat more to find the key to the bakery” (phrase eliminated in later versions of the old testament because no one found the key to the chest where was the original).
And finally you leave your house. And you try to forget what happened. You think about what you have to do. And you get on the bondi, the train, the taxi, your car, the motorcycle, the bike, or you just walk and half an hour, exactly, of having left your home, without meaning to you touch the pocket where the keys are. Now you don’t need them. But you know they are there. But of course: the doubt assails you inexorably: When I left… did I close the door properly?
