Going Keyless

Now the story can be told.

So anybody who knows me, which is everybody reading this, knows that in periods of mild distress, the first thing to go is my keys. Which is why there was a period in early 2006 when I had a crush on my locksmith.

Friday night I was walking home from work, when I got honked at by some co-workers, and spent a couple hours shooting the shit, being fed, drinking a beer or two. Then I got dropped off at home. The person dropping me off asked if I had my keys. I cheerily said I did. But, in fact, I did not.

Here we come to the part that, for me, seems inextricably linked to living in a smaller town, but probably isn't. In L.A., when I locked myself out the locksmith was my only friend. Here, I had left the window open, which meant that with some surprisingly deft manipulation of the screen, I was in like Flynn.

It was the weekend, and I had left my keys in my office, which is locked on the weekend. I have the key, in theory, but, at that moment, obviously not in the particular.

And so I spent the weekend without my keys, and went in on Monday leaving my apartment unlocked (it can only be locked from the outside, although I can lock it if I'm in it) and then on Monday I forgot, again, to bring my keys home with me.

It was, I'll admit, kind of annoying and mildly nerve-wracking. But it was disorienting to realize that it wasn't that big a deal. Nothing in my life was that different without my keys, especially given that I do shit like leave my ground floor window open.

There is no real point to this anecdote, but it felt like a parable of some kind.