Keys.

My nemesis.

My cross to bear.

The bane of my existence.

This may seem excessive, unless you are my wife, Betty. If you were, you’d know all about my private war with the little metal slivers. Poor Betty has been witness to more than a few key-related tantrums. I appreciate her fortitude. I don’t know why I’m so key-challanged. Probably some hideous childhood experience I’ve completely blocked out. Maybe it’s some kind of subconscious rebellion against locks and all they represent: distrust, exclusion, the need to protect. In my perfect world there would be no locks. No need for them. If we had no locks, we’d need no keys, ergo, we’d have nothing to lose, nothing to inspire crazy, frantic searching. No handbag would require dumping upside down on a rainy doorstep, nothing for demon holes in pockets to gobble into linings.

But, NOT!. In fact, there are more locks now than ever, when you consider those hateful passwords. Let’s not even go there.

I’ve tried everything to solve this. I keep my keys in only one place, I think I’m very careful about this, but sometimes I’m not, and they wind up somewhere ridiculous. And I wasn’t kidding about the handbag. I can stand there and go carefully through every pocket in the thing, not finding the keys, and then suddenly there they are, in the first place I looked. Mocking me. G-r-r!

For a while I had a keyless car. What a luxury! As long as I had the fob in my bag, the car would start at the touch of a button. It also unlocked itself upon my approach. Genius! Why aren’t they all like that? I’m lucky to live in a town where locking one’s car is the exception to the rule. At the risk of sounding like the old fart I seem to have become, I remember when we never locked our doors here, never mind the car, unless we were going away, or “off-Cape”. Now I lock my door whenever I leave the house, carefully putting my house keys in their own special pocket in my bag, confident they won’t be there when I look for them upon my return. Right now, in fact, I’m preparing to go out to the supermarket. After I locate my keys, that is.