The Mailbox Keys
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At first, I laughed it off. I opened the junk drawer, scanned the menagerie of debris that lives in there, and registered that the mailbox keys really weren’t there. Huh, where did they go? They’re always reliably in the drawer, tangled with the rubber bands and spare hearing aid batteries and likely-dried-up pens and many pairs of scissors of various sizes. It hit me at that point that perhaps that wasn’t such a great place to house the mailbox keys, but how do you change a habit so ingrained? It’s not like they could go in the silverware drawer, or on the bookshelf, or in the fruit bowl. There wasn’t a real place for them, and they were small and trinket-like, so off they had ended up in the junk drawer and that was that forever and ever.
I looked around the floor after searching the drawer a second and third time, each time the disappearance of the mailbox keys becoming more real and definite. I scanned the counter and the kitchen table, I moved and lifted and opened and closed, but no sight of the little mailbox keys. Then I got distracted with, oh I don’t know, one of the five million unimportant things that demanded my immediate attention, and decided to look for the keys tomorrow.
The next day, I went back to the junk drawer, with the certainty that surely I hadn’t looked well enough. Once again I sorted through the mess, promising myself to clean it up soon and simultaneously forgiving myself because it was clearly not going to happen. They really weren’t there, the little fuckers. And why had I kept them together? The key and the spare, hanging together in the same ring that came with the mailbox so that in a crisis like the one at hand, I would never be able to open it again. It’s not like I get regular love letters; more importantly, here in the year of our lord 2020 I’m one of those idiots that still gets paid pretty regularly by check, so I do need to be able to actually open my mailbox. My anxiety rises as I turn the kitchen upside down, then the living room, then my bedroom. As I fling things around, I do a mental run through possible solutions. How embarrassing would it be to call a locksmith for this, and how much would it cost? Could I manage to open it by banging on it with a rock? Does a credit card work in this scenario, or is that just for breaking into city apartments?
I contemplate emailing all of my clients and informing them that, effective immediately, they must pay me by direct deposit, whether they know what that is or not. I probably should do that regardless, frankly, because half of the time the banking app does a double-take with their handwriting and kindly directs me to take my clearly fraudulent piece of paper to the branch. What a mess. I sit on the bed, defeated, with a prime view of my laundry hamper, and then the lightbulb goes on. I fish out the shorts I wore on Sunday, and there they are, the little fuckers, in the right pocket. I stride over to the front door and unlock the mailbox. There are three catalogs inside, and a letter from Barack Obama clearly asking for money. I wrinkle my nose at the mailbox and shut it. Back inside, I toss the catalogs and Barack Obama’s letter in the recycling, then place the keys gingerly in the fruit bowl.
