On Losing My Keys and Regaining My Sanity
By nickie
- 3565 reads
"I had to buy a dress. That's why I was at the bookstore (a writer
will go to the bookstore for just about any reason). In any event, I
was searching the aisles, as I often do, not for anything in
particular, and then I found it: the one. This book promised to show me
the way. It was a roadmap to life, a soul searching, all questions
answered kind of book. If anyone needed a map, it was me. I took it to
the counter and proceeded to pay for it. I handed them my discount
card, which was attached to my keychain, and waited. This is where my
story takes a turn. See, my discount card had expired. I had bought an
updated one, but who knows what I did with that thing. That had been
two months prior. It was long gone. So, the lady behind the counter had
to go through a seemingly long and dragged out process of determining
if I had, in fact, kept my card up to date. She, in fact, dragged the
process out as much as she could, even showing a new checkout clerk the
way it was done, but eventually she gave me my keys back. I know she
did - I can still remember how they felt in my hands. They were sticky
from the tape she had put over the freshly written expiration date. I
know I had them. They were right there. I left the store, and
eventually even bought a dress a mere three doors down. On the way out
of there was when I first noticed my problem. My keys were gone. There
I was, holding a new dress and the road map to my life, and I couldn't
find my keys. Just my luck. That's my life in a nutshell," or so I told
my therapist.
In fact, I gave her a full hour of stories involving lost keys. See, I
think it all means something, and that was quite a message, losing my
keys the minute I finally had the map. "And there was this other time,"
I went on, "that I lost not my keys, but a single key, my car key to be
exact. It was winter. The snow had kept everyone in for the past couple
of days. I went to K-Mart, not just any K-Mart, but to the Super
K-Mart. Apparently, I was not the only one. Everyone was there, and
Super-K has everything: clothes to buy, shoes, housewares, all kinds of
stuff, plus groceries, a must have after the snow. The roads were just
barely passable that day, but it was some kind of crowded in that
place. It was an absolute madhouse. The lines were tremendously long. I
bet I was in line for forty-five minutes that day. My son was with me,
about eight months old at the time. He was very tired and hungry when
we finally made it out of that place and dragged the cart outside,
through icy snow that was so thick that the cart was practically
impossible to pull out there with me. It was quite a process," I
whined. " When I got to my car, parked way in the back, of course, I
pulled out my keys, and to my dismay, every key was on that keychain
except the one I needed to get in the car and drive home. I had to drag
that cart all the way back through the ice and the snow until I had
made it back to the store, where I searched in vain for my missing key
and eventually had to call my Dad, who took about an hour to get there.
At least he had a key. It was awful. My son was in tears as we waited
and waited; it was so cold and messy that day. It was one of the worst
days of my entire life, and I spent it waiting out in front of the
Super-K on what seemed like the coldest day of the year."
"Anyways," I told my therapist again, this was, "just another example
of my life, an episode that represents the comedy of errors I have been
engaged in thus far." She insisted it did not mean anything, that none
of it means anything. "It's all just part of life," she assured me,
"not everything has some sort of symbolism to it. Sometimes, a cigar is
just a cigar. People lose keys all the time. There is no secret message
behind it." I shook my head. I knew on some level she was right. The
hour was up, and, reassured, I left.
On the way out, I reached into my pocketbook to grab my keys. I
remember seeing the fluorescent rings of the keys to my office as I got
out the keys to my car. They are on separate chains, the result of an
embarrassingly recent loss. When I got to my SUV, I decided to look one
more time, just to be sure, and to my surprise, but not really, my
office keys were gone. Vanished. I backtracked and found them a short
distance away on the road. I could hardly believe it. I had just spent
my whole hour discussing the hidden meaning behind lost keys - it means
I am irresponsible, a klutz, disorganized, and a host of other bad
things and she had sworn to me that it meant none of those things. So,
here I was, just seconds out of her office, and I had already lost my
keys, again. This was more than just coincidence. Of course, this time
it was different. I had found them this time. Maybe, I thought to
myself, the hidden meaning is not about losing keys. Maybe it's about
finding them. And that is where this story comes to it's end, somewhere
in the middle of my life. My life goes on, and there is a meaning
behind it all&;#8230;
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