The Missing Keys

Last Sunday we had church at someone else's house.  Usually we have church at our house, but sometimes we mix things up and this past Sunday was one of those days.  Having church at home is nice because you're never late, but you also have to set up chairs and put everything away when everyone has left.  But if you have church at someone else's house, you have to put on shoes and leave on time.  So it's a toss-up.

This Sunday we had everyone loaded into the car twenty-five minutes before church started.  I was finishing up dressing William when Brandon started yelling about the car keys.  I finished with William and went down to find out the problem.  I'm not a good person, and so when Brandon said that he couldn't find the car keys, I silently said a prayer of thanks that he had them last and not me.  The moral high ground is always the better place to be in these instances.

I started looking, too because I'm an okay person and I know how frustrating it is to be the only one looking for a lost item.  Even the motions of looking are soothing to the person who has lost the item.

After fifteen minutes we still hadn't found the keys.

Thirty minutes passed and Brandon let the other members know to start without us.

Forty-five minutes passed and we realized that our last week of church would be spent looking for car keys.

After an hour Brandon started looking up how to get car keys replaced when you lived in Tajikistan and didn't have any extra keys to copy.

By that time everyone had systematically gone through the house, room by room, including sifting through every single trash can in the house.  We had looked under and in every single couch, in all the toy bins, in all the dressers, through every drawer, in every cupboard, and in every single conceivable place a set of keys could hide in a 5,500 square-foot house.

Eventually we all gave up and made dinner.

Brandon was in despair, trying to figure out how to turn a two-ton yard ornament into something that he could use to do things like take him to work in the morning.  I was a little less despairing, figuring that they would eventually turn up.  This happens with 95% of lost household items, with the exception of a rolling pin that Kathleen lost when we lived in an eight hundred square-foot duplex.

The day went on, and eventually the children settled in for story time with Dad.  In the middle of the mazzalato scene in The Count of Monte Cristo, Kathleen went to turn on Brandon's bedside lamp and found the keys up in the lampshade, stuck firmly to the metal supports by a magnet.

Eleanor went into the room to see what all the fuss was when everyone started shouting in joy and amazement.  "Oh, the keys!  I put them up there!  Sorry I forgot!"

That night I went and ordered Tiles for all the keys.  Technology really makes one's life better sometimes.