Where are the keys!

Lost Keys and Amelia’s First Airplane Ride

“Damn! I left the car seat base in the back seat of the car.”

I was almost all of the way to the terminal after dropping the car in the lot and jogging back to where I had dropped Heidi and Amelia. Now I had to turn around and run all the way back to the parked car so we could check in and make our flight.

This was the first time we had flown with Amelia and I was a little bit nervous. Coupled with the fact that she had been up much of the night and that we had left the house at 4:00 am I was feeling a little bit out of it. So the day had begun in a daze and that daze and confusion had continued to this point. Amelia and Heidi were waiting on the curb and I had already begun to foul up the trip.

I was jogging back to the car with Heidi’s gigantic set of keys. Her key chain contains nearly every key she has ever used. It has the auto openers for both of our cars, lock keys to doors she opens that I’m not aware of, and a gigantic fake diamond ring that I believe is a sentimental gift. The whole array has several rings joined together giving the whole thing length—it is about 7 inches long and as I ran with it in my hand it lopped over both sides of my hand like a floppy baton.in my hand because a week earlier she had misplaced my keys. It really wasn’t her fault—the baby was crying and we had just driven all the way from NYC—but in the end my keys were gone. And here it must be noted that my keys contain 1 ring, 2 keys and an auto opener and are designed to fit in one’s pocket rather than giant purse.

So I near the car and notice that I had forgotten to close the window of the car. That’s right—the car was sitting there with the window wide open. If I had not forgotten the car seat it would have remained open for the whole week we were in Ohio. So I jumped in put the window up, grabbed the car seat and ran back to the terminal to check in.

Here is where it begins to get interesting. We checked in and had moved over to the security line when I noticed that I no longer had the keys to our car. I asked Heidi if she had them and she said no. I searched through the bag looking for them and then began to go down a bad road. It was early and I was tired but there was little excuse for me saying, “Heidi, if you hadn’t lost my keys this wouldn’t have happened.” Oops! Her look froze me and she was not pleased. Immediately I realized I was wrong but rather than apologizing I continued with my line of reasoning talking about my “system” and how my “key system” of carrying them in my pocket was superior to her gigantic purse key system. We were in the security line, with a baby, arguing about who lost the keys at 5:00 in the morning. Ick!

It was too late to turn back so we went through the security line thinking that we would worry about the keys later. And here a bit of an aside but the security line continues to baffle me. We walked into the line having never done this before and said to the TSA person:
“We have never done this before and want to make sure that we follow the rules, can you tell us how to take our stroller and baby through security?”[1]
And the security people responded with curse demands:
“Put it over there!”
“Not like that! Fold it up and run it on the conveyor.” At the same time that no one had ever mentioned to put the stroller on the conveyor.
“Don’t walk through with the baby until we tell you!” said while Heidi was standing perfectly still.

Of course I understand that the stakes and I understand that security needs to be high at all times into the future. But when people are saying, “I want to comply with whatever you say next,” and then the people are mean and curt and un-helping to those people—well it doesn’t lead to a great deal of mutual trust.

Back to the keys—we made it to Ohio, dumped out all the bags and certainly did not have the keys. Stay tuned (interneted?) for the conclusion to our mystery.


[1] Now I know that you probably know that most of the “quotes” that I include are actually paraphrases of what was probably said but I must say that this is exactly how nice we said it.