The Key Coincidence

I locked my apartment door, shoved my keys into my pocket, and ran down the stairs and out onto the street, texting, Facebooking, Instagraming, and tweeting all the while.  Waiting at the second bus stop of my morning commute, my normal smartphone activities were interrupted with the strangest thing of all:  a phone call.  Sometimes I forget that our phones can actually do that.

"Hey, Jack.  It's me, Tara.  I'm going to be late for work.  I've been running around trying to find my keys... and anyway, I've got the spare now so I'm on my way."

"That's fine," I said.  "See you when you get there."

I arrived at the mall and sat myself down on the bench in front of Zales, where I work.  My phone continued to entertain me, this time it was an ebook of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned.  Gloria had just murmured "Good-by, you ass" to the poor lovestruck Anthony when the oddly paranoid thought struck me:  Where are my keys?

I set the phone down and felt my pockets.  All of them.  Even my back pockets where I would surely never put keys.  Nothing.  Were they in my socks?  In my paper lunch sack?  They had to be somewhere!

"I'm here," said Tara from behind me, her voice obviously grumpy.  "Today already sucks."

"You had to use your spare car key to get here, right?" I asked her.

"Yeah..."

"So you wouldn't by chance have a spare work key too?"  I laughed uneasily.

"No.  Why?  You don't have your keys either?"

I shook my head in the negative and recounted the same dull tale you have just read.  What an odd coincidence that we would both misplace our keys on the same morning!  Luckily another coworker of ours, Mineh, was able to come to the store and let us in with her own set of keys.  She laughed at us all the while and insisted that we owed her something big.  Like ice cream.  We willingly agreed to her demands.

The worst part of this whole story is that when I called the Utah Transit Authority to see if my keys had been found on one of their buses, the answer wasn't a very good one.

"Our drivers check for lost items at the end of the day.  You'll have to wait until the next business day to call us or perhaps I can help you locate the bus and you can search for yourself."

"Well, seeing as I'd need to take a bus to find the bus, I'm not sure that'll work.  Besides I have work now.  And I took two different bus routes..."

"I'm sorry, sir.  You'll have to call back on our next business day.  Which is Tuesday."

Tuesday?  Why Tuesday?  Then it dawned on me.  Today was Friday, they are closed on weekends, and the upcoming Monday happens to be Labor Day.  Go figure I'd lose my keys right before a three-day weekend.

"Awesome," I said.  "Just awesome."  I was not feeling awesome.  I ended the call and set to work hastily getting the store ready for opening.

"I think you're right, Tara," I said to my coworker.  "Today already sucks."