Hide and seek

Frustrating things can happen when you don’t drive for several days. And you’ve been moving things around in your van. And you’re an easily confused old fart. Frustrating things, like misplacing the van key.

I had been parked in the desert since Friday, chilling, reading, avoiding holiday traffic. But I was getting antsy and wanted to go into Yuma and maybe have a meal cooked by someone else.

The key almost always gets tossed on the counter along with my wallet. Sometimes it stays in my pocket. But it was neither place today. It also wasn’t on the floor, the bed, between the mattress and the wall, under the bed, in the laundry bag, in the pockets of the pants in the laundry bag, in the cupboard, in the cabinet, in the storage boxes, on the ground outside the van, under the driver’s seat, in the wastebasket… I even checked in the poo bucket. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I had resigned myself to getting the spare from its hiding place under the van and having another key made when a small idea made its way into conscious thought. “Check the mailboxes.”

I have a row of mailboxes along the wall where I store underwear, socks, odds and ends, and medication. I can usually grab the pills I need by touch, but the other night I emptied that mailbox while trying to find the aspirin. Then I scooped everything from the counter and dumped it back into the box. I hadn’t noticed “everything” included the key.

The upside of this, besides finding the key, is knowing it hadn’t been a case of intentionally putting the key somewhere that made perfect sense at the time and then forgetting where.