Babe, Keys?

I have gotten chewed out by married people for forgetting my wallet and keys when I leave places. It falls into the list of things you simply shouldn’t do, especially if you’re single.

I quite agree. One shouldn’t lose one’s keys. Yet one does. One does more than once.

In college my roommate asked me to run with her to the drugstore real quick and I walked out the door with a jar of peanut butter and a roll of Oreo cookies and a knife (because I’m not an animal) and she walked out the door without keys.

We spent four hours on our apartment landing, vaguely hallucinating and getting dehydrated (the stairwell had to be about 80 degrees) because no locksmith believed us when we told them what happened. The giggling might have abetted the disbelief.

I would have been more upset about it, but I got to skip a class with the fantastic excuse of “I’m locked out of my apartment because my roommate.”

I once actually managed to lock myself out of my apartment in the middle of a tornado warning as I was making dinner in the oven and walking around barefoot. Drove closer to the tornado to pick up a spare set.

I’ve locked myself out of my apartment in the middle of a rainstorm wearing pajamas, and walked a mile to recover my spare keys.

When you’re single — and most especially if you’re living alone and single — getting locked out is always an adventure. There’s no reliable person who has keys who is contractually obligated to come to your rescue. And I’ve never once found a safe place to hide my keys outside my apartment that won’t be easily discovered if someone with an extra five minutes decided to rob my adorable, though hardly richly furnished apartment (you hear me burglars?).

I don’t know if it’s true that married people don’t lock themselves out of their home as much as single people, but given the surprise I’ve encountered, it seems to be a real thing.

Perhaps when you marry you get better at keeping track of your keys, or perhaps you get to take advantage of “babe, where are my keys?” something single people don’t usually say.

I mean, I could. I could say that the next time I lose my keys. But honestly, people get uncomfortable enough when I talk to myself in the Safeway parking lot. Adding an invisible significant other to my repertoire probably won’t help.