Kate Loses Her Mind, No One Reaps the Benefits

Today I lost a set of car keys. Within 30 seconds of driving the car with which they are associated. And, I was pretty confident, within the car itself.

I've heard stories of gynecologists warning menopausal patients that they are likely to lose their car in a parking lot at some point during their perimenopausal stage. Is this some kind of warning shot across the bow? Menopause is to forgetting where you put your car in the parking lot, as PMS is to being unable to locate your keys? And if that's true, someone should alert the makers of Yaz immediately, because they could use a new ad campaign stat, since they had to pull that other one.

The most infuriating part of losing car keys is trying to find them, and I really wanted to give up, but that wasn't even an option-- a.) they belong to Grammy, and b.) I lost them right after I pulled her car into our driveway, trapping my poor little Jetta, whose keys had not gone AWOL, so I had no legitimate way to go hunt down a spare.

I found them eventually. There was about a 25 foot path in which they could have disappeared, and it took me 20 minutes to find them. I started out as a reasonable person, tracing my steps, double-checking every possible location where I could have set them. Then I tore apart the pile of belongings that I had dumped onto the backseat of the car, becoming increasingly frenzied, hearing over and over in my head that obnoxious adage about things being in the last place you look. (I mean, really. I'm pretty sure the first person who ever heard that particular nugget of wisdom never found what he or she was trying to find, because they suddenly felt stabby and refocused their efforts on locating an implement to inflict pain on the speaker.)

But, shockingly, the keys were not in the last place I looked. No. Because I gave up looking. I stopped digging through my bag (where, by the way, there were two other sets of keys). I got into the car, sulked for a moment, and prepared to call my mother and tell her I was an idiot who was sitting in one of three useless cars-- one without keys and two without the tunneling or flight capabilities necessary to move past the first. And then, as I reached for my phone, the keys made themselves known to me, their little blue fob glinting under the passenger seat.

I rejoiced. I started the car and turned on the radio and pointed the car toward the beach.

And then I remembered that in two weeks, I have to be a functional person capable of higher-level thought. Gulp.