25 Hour Watch

            My car keys were missing. I’d had them minutes before; I knew I did. But as of this precise moment, I had no idea where they had gone. Beyond any doubt they had to be somewhere in the house. After all, I’d driven myself home not ten minutes before and had since visited a grand total of three rooms.

            They weren’t in any of them.

            In my jacket pocket? Wasn’t wearing a jacket. In my pants pocket? A quick check revealed nothing. In my purse, where they belonged? After emptying the thing, still no keys. Every usual place, each possible location that might have made sense—they all left me empty-handed.

            Though agitated, there seemed little I could do. I follow a very precise routine where important belongings, such as keys, are concerned. It seems smart to limit the chance of losing things by careless chance. So how could this have possibly happened? Where the heck were my car keys?

            Fortunately, I knew just where my spare set lay safely tucked away in a drawer. The original must be somewhere within these walls. No sense in feverously worrying about them. That’s what backup plans are for; why bother having them otherwise?

            So reluctantly, I set the incident aside for awhile. I would find my keys eventually. Sometime soon, I’d stumble across them and experience a moment of epiphany, in which I would recall the exact moment of placing them in an atypical location, and my reasoning therein.

            This, however, did not happen.

            One afternoon, two days after the initial disappearance, I reached into my purse for my chapstick. First fingering a tiny vial of perfume, followed by a pen and small stack of post-it notes, I recovered the tube, uncapped its end, and applied the balm to my lips. Next, I picked up an empty bottle of Coppertone Sport Sunscreen, SPF 50 (tribute to my strong belief in taking precautions to avoid unnecessary burns), and went in search of the recycle bin.

            It wasn’t until I reached the kitchen that I made an important discovery: the sunscreen bottle was in my right hand, my missing car keys were in my left.

            I have no explanation.

            Nothing drives me crazier than the inexplicable.