Lost Keys

Two days ago, I lost the elevator key that allows you to ride to our building’s basement, along with the key to one of our building’s basement locker rooms and the key to the padlock that secures our locker.  All of them hung from the same key ring, which I kept in a bureau drawer devoted to my keys.  Ultimately I found them inside the pockets of the pants I was wearing when last I used the keys.  Had I not found them, I would have had to request a new elevator key from our building’s superintendent, for which the building would charge a substantial fee, and I would have had to invite a locksmith to break our locker’s padlock and to sell us a new one.  Frightened at this possible future prospect, I determined to make duplicate keys. 

Nothing is as easy as you think it will be.  First of all, the elevator key cannot be duplicated without some sort of official permit that only the building’s administration possesses.  Second, while the locksmith’s copy of the key to the locker room worked, the key to our padlock did not.  I returned to him and asked him to adjust the latter’s cut, which he did.  Had I thought of it at the time, I would have brought the padlock too so I could test his work.  As it turned out, his second cut was no more successful than his first.  Well, tomorrow’s another day, I told myself.  I’ll return the next day, this time with the padlock.

But yesterday, when I looked for my keys, I could not find them.  I found the duplicate keys where they should have been, in my dedicated drawer for keys.  But where were the originals?  The originals and copies should have been together.  I know the originals are somewhere in the apartment, because when I went to test the locksmith’s second attempt yesterday, I had to use the elevator key.  I checked the pockets of the clothes I was wearing yesterday but they were empty of keys. 

Lady Bracknell said something to the effect that losing one parent is a tragedy but losing two is carelessness.  The opposite is true for keys, at least for this octogenarian.  Losing them once is carelessness, losing them twice is a tragedy.  Thirty years ago, had I lost my keys twice in two days I would have been irritated with myself, but now I felt despondent.   Was I losing my mind?  Was this a sign of diminished cognitive capacity?  Was my wife going to have to hire a caretaker for me?

Well, there was no point in walking to the locksmith yesterday, so I would take my daily walk in Prospect Park.  Diminished capacity or not, I could still walk and I felt reasonably confident that I could obey the traffic lights on the way and afterwards find my way home.  The park is beautiful in every season, but yesterday it was astonishing in its beauty, with a variety of trees and bushes in bloom, including ornamental pear, magnolia, cherry, and forsythia.  A foreign couple with children asked me the way to the zoo, to which they were headed in the wrong direction.  I helped them find their way, which made me feel better, suggesting that my mind was not entirely gone. 

That encounter, the oxygen intake from my walk, and the beauty of the flowering trees and shrubs calmed me down.  I had lost my keys.  I hadn’t lost my mind.  And if all I could worry about were those keys, I was a fortunate man indeed.

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