$600 Got Him Moving!

I hate to lose things. I mean absolutely, positively hate to lose things. To be honest I go a little berserk when things get lost. I inherited this characteristic from my mother. She wasn’t the most organized person in the world and she carried a tremendously large purse around wherever she traveled, which certainly didn’t help matters.

Sometimes she would throw her keys or wallet into her purse and completely freak out when she reached around in there and couldn’t find them. I can vividly recall my mom dumping the entire contents of her purse onto cosmetic counters in the mall trying to find her keys. This happened on more than one occasion. For some reason she always convinced herself that she left them in the car, in a different store or dropped them somewhere between the car and wherever we were at that exact moment in time. Ninety-nine percent of the time they were sitting in the bottom of that enormous bag she lugged around with her.

She struggled with similar problems at home. Rather than keeping her key on a hook or counter by the door she would drop them somewhere in the house and then completely forget where she put them. The next morning when it was time to go to church or school or wherever we needed to be, she would realize that her keys were missing and run around the house in search of them. This involved frantic worrying, raising her voice and ultimately getting the rest of us, (my dad, brother and I), to search every nook and cranny in the house alongside her.

I’m an uber organized person. I can probably tell you where ninety percent of the things in our home are located. Down to the specific room, drawer, box or bin. I’ve always been this way. As a kid I set aside a specific place for everything in my room and before leaving for school I would scan those four walls to make certain everything was in it’s place.

Most of the time being organized keeps me from losing things, but every so often things get misplaced. When things get lost I try to retrace my steps, I think back to the place I last had the object and all the places I’ve been in that day. Usually I can find what I’m looking for, but when I can’t I go absolutely berserk just like my mom did all those years ago.

I start a massive search, opening all drawers, the washing machine and dryer, pants pockets, the car, the couch and every where in between. I feel uneasy when things go missing, even though I know it’s not the end of the world when things get lost. I will obsess over it and the question, “where did I put that darn thing,” will pop into my head over and over throughout the day.

Day before yesterday I noticed that the smart key to our Toyota Highlander was missing. I remember taking the key in the morning. I moved that car out of the way in the morning so I could drive my son to the library in our 99 Camry. After climbing into the Camry I considered running the key back inside, but we were already late for story time and I really didn’t want to be any later. I remembered seeing the key in the cup holder of the Camry and I was almost positive that I moved it back to it’s usual holding place when I got home that afternoon.

My husband told me without a doubt that there was only one key there when he went to work the next morning. He is famous for losing his wallet, keys and just about everything else that can fit inside a man’s pocket, so I wasn’t quite sure if I trusted his memory on this one, but it was strange circumstances with which I grabbed the key to move the car so for the most part I believed him. I searched the entire house from top to bottom and both cars two or three times. I asked my husband to help me look for it. He glanced in his book bag and jeans pockets, which took all of three minutes, and then gave up. He never worries when things go missing.

I took my son to the playground after visiting the library and part of me wondered if I dropped it in the wood chips and didn’t hear it fall. We also ran around in the yard for quite a bit that afternoon and I wondered if it fell out of my pocket and into the grass.

I was so bothered by that key that I considered going back to the playground to search for it. I even considered raking the leaves in the backyard, because there was no way I could find it on the ground among all the leaves and sticks that have recently fallen.

Finally I came to terms with the fact that it was missing. I continued to mentally retrace my steps, but I was finished looking for it. I decided to order a new key and searched for the steps for getting a new one. It turns out that smart keys aren’t cheap. The estimates on the Internet averaged $600. I planned to call the dealer in the morning for a quote.

When my husband came home I told him I’d order a new one but it would probably cost about $600. “What?!,” he asked, “that much!” A $600 bill suddenly peaked his interest and he jumped from his chair to look for that key. Two seconds later, (I kid you not two seconds), he pulled it out of his coat pocket!