Leaving Keys

The very first phrase we learned in French class:

"J'ai laissé mes clés."
which translates as
"I left my keys."

Not the most immediately useful phrase, but it was taught to us in order to learn the vowel sound that is found in every syllable of the sentence. In his typical humor, our professor said that now when a French person tried talking to us, we could simply respond by saying the only phrase we knew, "I left my keys."

Six months later, it was the morning of the kid's birthday party, just a few days after my wife and newborn had returned home. I ran down to our storage unit in the basement to retrieve a few things. Details aside, Erica's key ring had the key to get into the main door, my key ring had the key to open the lock on our unit, and so I marched down with two sets of keys. When I opened our door, I set both sets down and began searching. I said to myself, "That's stupid, don't forget to pick them up on your way out." Attention obviously elsewhere, I got what I needed, locked up, left, and went back upstairs, and as I went to open our apartment door I realized.

Every key in our possession, locked behind two doors in the basement. Already running late to set up for the party happening at our school, too early to ask a neighbor for help, no longer able to drive all of the things we needed to the party, and unable to leave our apartment or our building without having absolutely no way to get back in...this was quite the predicament.

I waited a little while until someone was more likely to be awake, then listened outside of my nice neighbors' door for some noise. When I heard some, I gulped down the cowardice and knocked. When it opened, I gave a greeting, then proudly used the phrase with perfect pronunciation: J'ai laissé mes clés...

I got what I needed, but that only opened the first door. Thankfully I laid the keys close inside the second, which had wooden slats with narrow openings between each. With my trusty broom handle, I flipped the box toward the door, and the keys came sliding right to the entrance at the bottom opening. All things told, the predicament was worked out fairly easily. Not the best way to start birthday party day, but could have been worse.

Now here we are another six months later, and I cannot find the key to the first basement door. Nowhere to be found. It was loose in my pocket, and assuming it fell out somewhere when I pulled out the others. It's a key I've been meaning to copy since the last incident.

And it's a problem because, well, it just may have been the choice hiding spot for a few Christmas presents this year. And when an elf locks everyone out of Santa's workshop 2 days before the big event.......it just kind of puts a damper on the festivities, no?

Time to quit telling you about it and find a solution, I suppose.