Nothing But Love :: golf blogger

Keys

Since we moved and I decided to vacate the office that was located near our house, I am carrying fewer keys than I did before. And isn't that the goal of down-sizing and simplifying -- reducing the number of locks to unlock in your life and the keys you need to do that?

So, here are my keys and the "key ring."

I have a key to the door to the loft, a key to the building security doors, a key for the car, and a key to our mailbox in the building. We have only one car and the ignition key fits the trunk; so, I am spared having to carry a trunk key and the keys to a second car. I do have a key to the storage unit, which has become far too large for what we have stored now. We sold the refrigerator and gave the freezer, together with its pair of keys, and the stove to a half way house. We gave away some other stuff. Matt took one of the futons; so, there's still stuff in the storage unit, but not enough to fill even half the space.

Foregoing the office, to which I rarely made a visit, relieved me of three keys and the need to remember the code to punch in on the keypad to silence the alarm after normal business hours, despite using the two keys to breach the outer doors of the building, and the password to give to the alarm company so they didn't call the police when I didn't punch in the code on the keypad properly and enough I.D. to convince the cop, if I didn't know him, that I belonged there when I forgot the password and told the alarm company guy to send the police over because it was way easier doing that than cluttering my feeble mind with all that other crap. It's bad enough I have to remember the Rule Against Perpetuities, the Exclusionary Rule, and the Statute of Frauds, which isn't a statute at all, let alone codes and passwords to silence alarms in an office in which I rarely made an appearance.

I never kept the lawn tractor key or the garage key on my keychain, but I still had to keep track of the things. Wait ... I forgot that the engine on the tractor blew because Johnny, one of the J-dogg's acquaintances, jacked up the compression or something so that it would go faster. That's ... uhhh ... like what drug addicts do in their spare time when they like get together. That key was still laying around; and I'd get asked, "What's this?" to which I'd say, "Tractor key;" and I'd get asked, "Why do we still have that fuckin' tractor?" to which I'd answer, "I dunno." We got a lawn service. And the garage key I didn't need because we had a fancy digital electronic garage door opener.

I did carry a U.S. Postal Service key, upon which was imprinted "DO NOT COPY," to my post office box, which I no longer use because I no longer maintain the office in that locale. That reminds me that I should stop off at that Post Office when I'm in the area and get my $1 deposit I put down on the key twenty years ago. I wonder if I get interest on a dollar. But then I'd have to find the key, wouldn't I.

I had a key to a friend's law office, which he told me I could use if I needed an office way out in the suburbs. He moved and gave me a different key, but he didn't ask me to return the old key. I'm glad of that because I had already lost the old key. I keep his office key on its own separate key ring; so, if I lose his key, I won't lose my keys, too.

One of the non-key items on my key ring is the medallion I received at the end of parents' psychotherapy week at the Wilderness Treatment Center. That's the one out in Montana. On one side is the logo for the "Dub," and on the other side is the Serenity Prayer, which I need to read when I have to say it at Al-Anon meetings because I haven't really got it down in my memory. It's funny. I can remember really important stuff that might just save the world one day like "Gort, Klaatu berada nichto," but not the Serenity Prayer, the incantation of which helps millions of people every day. Go figure.

Come to think of it, reading the Serenity Prayer may have helped in driving on the Going-to-the-Fucking-Sun Road out there in Montana; but on second thought, I tend to drift to the right a little when I'm reading while driving, which would not be a good thing on the Going-to-the-Fucking-Sun Road, especially with a person in the passenger seat already whimpering and crying.

And the other item on my key ring is a Christmas present, a miniature rubber chicken. I had a rubber chicken for many years, a regulation-size rubber chicken. It was once "borrowed" by an employee of a law firm where I worked long before recorded history began. She was nearly fired over the incident ... the head guy said something like, "She stole another employee's property ... an attorney's property;" and I said, "Howard, it's a fucking rubber chicken, which really belongs to no man," or something like that. I think he realized that someone might laugh at "theft of a rubber chicken" as a reason for termination. She returned the rubber chicken, putting it back where she found it, hanging by its neck from the coat hook on the back of my office door. She eventually quit, probably because of the stigma of being a rubber chicken thief.

The keys I have are, in fact, replacement keys for the keys and the key ring I lost. I'm pretty sure I threw them down the rubbish chute. Those keys didn't like me because in addition to falling down the rubbish chute into the bowels of the building, they had, when we were moving, secreted themselves in a box that went into storage, but that's another story; and we needn't remind the other half of the blog about that. It would mean almost certain bodily injury for this writer ...

Posted by Bill at December 28, 2006 08:42 PM