I don’t know about you, but this election cycle about has me thinking we should go back to a dynasty system where nobody runs for anything and kings are just born and not made.

But I don’t really mean that and it really has nothing to do with this post. I’m just really really sick of seeing two specific but unnamed people on the news.

Anyway….

This post is about keys.

Because if we did have a king in the US; and if that king was me; I would get rid of keys. Period.

I hate keys.

Keys hate me.

Keys, or lack thereof, are the reason I have kicked in my own garage door, broken a plate glass window, sat outside in the rain and cried, and not so very long ago, walked with my nephew all over Sturbridge Village with our heads down before sitting outside in the cold for an hour waiting on a locksmith.

I am about $500 poorer thanks to locksmiths I have paid just in the last few years. There are a lot of other things I would rather have done with that $500. Shoot.  I would rather have given it to you.

(And that is only that low because, at least once, I stayed locked out of my house for three days rather than pay a lock smith to get me back in.)

Of course, my best key story involved a 2:00 am search for a single Toyota key…my grandma in her pajamas…raiding the cash drawer in the dining hall…and dragging innocent civilians out of church…But many of you have heard the details of that epic adventure and since being let out on parole after that memorable night, I’ve been on fairly good behavior.

That is, until this week.

Like many of the episodes in my long list of key losing misadventures, this one involved a borrowed car. The borrowed car that means a single key…a loose key…left to its own devices…wreaking havoc…reducing to tears a girl that tries so hard to be brave…and robbing me of hard earned cash.

Some things were never meant to be single.

Keys are one of them.

But due to my recent travels back and forth to Kentucky, I’ve been driving a borrowed van (which I liked until today) and carrying around a fat black fob that has a few simple buttons–the controls to my dignity, my schedule, and my happiness.

It started when, between two 420 mile drives, I tried to squeeze in a house showing. All seemed to go well until we were locked up and ready to go on to the next house.

My clients, their two little girls who had been on extremely good bahvior, and me.   With no key.

The next twenty minutes or so involved walking, unlocking, musing, and searching, before finally discovering the key was, in fact, in my purse all along. The little trouble maker was hiding in the folds of my black purse and evidently escaped the first 1,456 searches.

Thankfully, my clients were understanding and their girls were–well, they deserve medals.

It was just a few days later when I was leaving the office in Kentucky and couldn’t locate my key (I’m so used to the keyless entry…where would I be, who would I be without keyless entry???). I did my best to dig for the same black key in the same black purse holding a water bottle, laptop, and armload of files. It was a futile effort.

Finally, I headed back inside where I dumped the entire contents of my purse onto the table and pawed through the items. Whether it had been on the purse or my table, I don’t know, but I found it!  I practically ran outside and fired up the van before the key had another opportunity to escape.

I drove halfway accross the parking lot before I noted– with terror– that my armload of files was blowing across the parking lot. Apparently, I had set the stack on the hood on my first trip while looking for the key.

To make matters worse–much worse–my laptop was precariously perched against the windshield. My first impulse was to slam on the breaks, but I knew that would be, well, let’s just say I would rather donate a few weeks of my life to holding a sandwich board on a street corner than recreating the files saved on that precious sliver of carefully arranged atoms. Much rather.

Thankfully, I was able to glide to a stop without incident. And after some effort in the start of a summer downpour, I was able to chase down the various papers that were rearranging themselves around the dampening parking lot.

But the incident was not without afterthought. I mean, I couldn’t just go on like this. I couldn’t just let this devious little fob continue to wreak it’s havoc. I had to have a plan.

So I made a plan.

It was a great plan.

I left the key in the cup holder. I left the van unlocked. I mean, who does that?  No one would expect it. No one would notice it. The places I parked, no one would steal it if they did notice it. And it would eliminate so much potential for disaster such as forgetting it in my back pocket and having it end up in the toilet (which may or may not have happened over the course of this narrative).

Okay, so if you are any kind of a sleuth at all you can probably figure out what happens in the next chapter of this story. You probably know jolly well why I’m sitting in a planter in front Moes getting alternately eaten by ants and bitten by mosquitos and watching the sun go down in Irmo, SC writing a blog and feeling my evening slip into the abyss of unfortunate key stories.

The key is right in the cup holder where I left it, but at this moment, I’m really wishing that I at least got the instant gratification of flushing it.  That would have been way cooler.

But I have a take away: if you are looking for a business, locksmith is where it’s at.

Seriously.

You can call every number in the area under locksmith and what you will find is that, apparently, you can run a successful locksmith business without even having a working phone number.

You can have a website that was designed in 1992.

You can have a Facebook page with a photo of your niece eating a marshmallow.

The cool thing is, you stay so busy, you don’t even  have to work. For that matter, you don’t have to answer the phone. Or, just for fun, you can answer the phone with a slick customer service slogan like, “Hi, can I put you on hold?”

And you can exercise absolute power by letting divas in blue jeans stay on hold for indefinate periods of time until the call eventually drops.

And if a particularly persistent customer, such as the type that finds themselves far away from home locked out of their vehicle, consistently calls back, you can right all the evils of the social injustice of our society by asking a long serious of questions such as “what color is your car?” (Which should be illegal under discrimation laws) and then promise to have a tech call them back.

Apparently, you can make so much money, they don’t ever have to call customers back. Or maybe you can choose based on whether you like their car color.

Basically, you can do whatever you want.

And when you show up, you can change your price to any amount you want.

It’s your business.

But you better get in the business soon, because I’m warning you, if I become king, no more keys. Period.

I know, I know, people are always trying to help me out with ideas of hidden keys and keys with neighbors, and I appreciate all that. But they also say you can’t fix stupid. And when it comes to keys, I’m afraid that’s the category I fall in.

So no more keys.

I mean, how much worse off would we really be if we just left our stuff unlocked?  I for one, would be $500 richer.

And I wouldn’t have all these ant bites.

And I would be home by now.

Just sayin.