Purse of Evil

[bcholmes]

I lost my keys the other day. Now, I'm completely anal about my keys, and I'm always terrified of losing them. But on Thursday evening, I was rushing out of the office, heading to a class. As I was leaving the office, I thought to myself, "I should check that I have my keys." I wondered that because I'm anal about my keys.

So I quickly sifted through my purse. No keys. That's not true. I did have some keys, just not my main keyring. Because I'm completely anal about the idea of losing my keys, I always have an extra set of keys. A smaller keyring with a car key and the two keys I need to get into my condo. And since I was rushing to get to class, I thought, "Well, they must be at my desk; they'll still be there tomorrow."

Next day, I arrive at my desk. No keys. My desk has stuff on it. I sift through the stuff. No keys. I wandered into the project room. No keys there.

By that point, I was doing mental forensics. I had to have brought them into work Thursday morning, because I would have noticed that I didn't have my security fob when I tried to enter the office. I only went out once during the day when Boss 1 asked me out to lunch. After lunch on Friday, I dropped in at the restaurant I ate at the day before and asked if they found any keys. No luck. I check with the front desk: any keys get turned in to lost-and-found? No.

So I'm thinking: how bad can this be? I'd be losing a copy of my two home keys, one car key, my work security fob, the key to my storage locker, the key to my mailbox, a key to the_siobhan's place, and the key to my laptop security chain. Maybe one or two extra keys on top of that. The most inconvenient thing would be the mailbox key.

So I'm doin' the mental forensics again. Worst case: suppose someone else opened the door at work for me Thursday morning? Might I have lost the keys on Wednesday? After work, maybe? At the pub? No, because I'm pretty sure I picked up my mail back at home Wednesday evening. No, everything points to me having the keys Thursday morning. And I didn't see them in my purse Thursday evening. They must be at work.

So I'm fretting about them all weekend. I ponder going in to the office again, to look. Except I don't have my security fob, so I can't get into the building. Grrr.

Today, I head out to buy groceries. I'm sifting through my purse, when I realize I can feel my keys on the other side of the fabric of my purse. My purse has an inner pocket; I keep foreign currency in there. And I dug out some American bills the previous week, when I was in Buffalo. I didn't zip the inner pocket closed and when I dumped my keys into my purse, they slipped into the inner pocket. My purse is evil.