Too Many Words for fmylife.com

First, if you haven't already heard, I was recently laid off and am currently unemployed. I'm not going to write about that here, at least not now, but I just wanted to provide the update.

Now onto the good stuff. On Saturday, I traveled with Jessie to Rochester, N.Y., to visit her extended family. She's been going up there since she was a little kid, but this was my first trip. I even volunteered to drive.

I had a nice time mingling with her family and playing volleyball, football, and basketball with her younger cousins. There were 40-plus people at the house during the day and 30-plus that stayed the night. Before going to bed, I went out to my car to grab my pillow and Jessie's bag, then tossed my keys into my bag before falling asleep.

In the morning, I went to get changed but couldn't find my bag anywhere, which was a problem since it had my keys and wallet in it. A few phone calls later, we learned that Jessie's uncle had mistakenly grabbed the bag when they left heading home for Erie. Thankfully they were not yet on I-90, so they turned around and came back with the bag.

I opened my bag and found my wallet...but not my keys. With each item of clothing I removed, I became a bit more panicked at the lack of keys. Suddenly, my mind began to race. Was it possible that my memory deceived me? Could I have left my keys in my car or locked them in the trunk when I went to get my pillow the night before?

As I alerted everyone of my missing-keys dilemma, the search party began. They looked in the yard, tried looking through my car windows to see if they were in the car. They looked in the house, but no one could find them.

As the search went on, I called AAA in the hope that I had locked them in the car—something I have been known to do before. After 45 minutes, the guy came and promptly popped open the door. This began a new search. I looked on the driver's seat, under the seat, in the passenger seat, the glove compartment, the back seat, the trunk...again, nothing.

I was starting to feel pretty hopeless. My only spare key was in my apartment, but my apartment key was on the missing keychain. And I couldn't even get ahold of my landlord to have him let me in my apartment because I only had his work number, and this was all happening on a Sunday morning.

As Jessie's aunt calmly tried to talk through our options, I called my mom and dad to see if they had a spare. No dice. My mom did suggest trying to call Hyundai Emergency Services, which covers my '08 Accent for 60 months. So, I got in contact with them to see if they could do anything. Unfortunately, I learned from them that they can only get spare keys from the dealership because the newer cars' keys have a special chip in them. It would cost $75 to tow me to the dealer, and they couldn't even do anything until Monday because they weren't open either.

Finally, without much of another option, Jessie and I made the decision to ride home as passengers in her grandma's car along with Jessie's sister and her grandma's dog. Then, I'd get in contact with my landlord Monday morning to get into my apartment for the spare key and drive back with either my mom or dad on Monday to retrieve my car.

As we were leaving, Jessie and I crammed in the backseat with the dog nervously pacing back and forth between us trying to sniff the air, we learned that my keys had gone home in Jessie's uncle's girlfriend Katie's bag. My only solace was that her bag was also a black Nike bag, so it was an honest mistake.

Jessie and I traveled in the backseat for a good hour and a half, battling dog scratches and slobber the whole way before finally agreeing to be dropped off at the Angola rest stop, where my mom had so graciously agreed to meet us with the keys she picked up from Jessie's uncle.

So, after lunch at Angola, my mom met us and we trekked back to Rochester with her, then drove home again, arriving in Erie some six hours or so later than we had anticipated.

***But wait, it gets better. You'd think I would have learned my lesson from the Rochester trip, but just yesterday, as I met Jessie for lunch at Gringos, my ineptitude struck again. We agreed to meet there at 11:50. As is usually the case, I arrived right at 11:50 and she showed up a few minutes later. In that interim period, I decided to conserve gas, idle the engine and let the music play off the car battery.

When she pulled up next to me, I excitedly got out of the car and greeted her with a hug and kiss. And it wasn't until after we enjoyed a most-delicious Gringos plate of loaded nachos that I noticed. I reached in my left pocket: cell phone. I reached in my right pocket: wallet. Uh oh. As I approached my car, I thought I heard Dave Matthews Band. Indeed.

Not only had I managed to lock my keys in the car, I had actually left them in the ignition. Feeling oh so stupid, I dialed AAA (again!) to ask them to send someone to unlock my car. This time it happened to be raining outside. Thankfully Jessie waited a good 45 minutes with me before she had to head back to work. I stood in the drizzle and wind for a few more minutes after that before help arrived. And just like that I was back in. The car started, and I was on my way back home...where I'm proud to say I have now gone without incident for more than 24 hours.
Print this post