note to self: never do that again

• Posted on July 24, 2009 at 10:41 am

So I went out to do my second-to-last day of Couch To 5K today. I made it. That’s not the problem.

No, the problem was… I have one of those things that’s like a teeny tiny fanny pack just big enough to hold the three mandatory items: my ID, my cell phone, and my apartment key. Especially my apartment key.

So off I went, chugging along my route. I heard some sort of noise at one point about half a mile out, like something small and metallic hitting concrete, but I didn’t think too much of it–I kick small metallic sidewalk debris all the time and besides it could not possibly have been anything important like say my apartment key, because of course it was safely tucked in my little pouch which of course was zipped securely.

I finished my run and plodded on home–twenty minutes earlier than usual! Great! Getting out of the apartment earlier sure was nice, now I’d have plenty of time to lie around with bags of frozen peas on my shins but first I needed to feed the downstairs neighbor’s cats who were gathered around my door mewing as cutely and pitifully as possible even though they and I both knew they were not starving to death because I’d just fed them before I went to bed. But they still needed food, so let’s just hop up the stairs and open up the door and–

–and discover that the little pouch at our waist, the one we were so sure was zipped… wasn’t.

Uh oh.

ID? Present. Cell phone? Present. Key?

…Key?

……KEY!?

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“Oh fuck,” I said.

“Meeeeh,” said the cats. The little fluffy orange girl cat sat down and licked my ankle.

Back down the stairs I went. See, I could have called the apartments… but the office didn’t open for half an hour, and they would have sent a locksmith, and they would have charged me $30 for that plus whatever it would cost for a new key and possibly a new lock and they just loooooooove to nickel and dime me to death on piddly shit like that, this is the same management that tried to charge me $80 in late fees on a water bill I accidentally underpaid by $2 and paid as soon as I found out two days later, you know they would have a field day with a lost key and well fuck a bunch of that.

At this point, I was pooped from my run and still not entirely awake, so my brain kept coming up with all these ideas that sounded great at first but fell apart as soon as I realized that they involved things that would have required me to, y’know, get something out of the apartment I could not get into.

“Hey, I’ll just get on the bike and pedal along the route I took, and–crap”

“Hey, if I dropped it in the street it’s good as gone anyway, I might as well just go inside and get ready for–crap”

“Well, before I run off looking for my key, I should probably feed the neighbor’s cats, they–crap”

As I walked, scanning the ground for shiny things, I remembered the little noise I’d heard. Oh please, I thought, OH PLEASE LET THAT BE WHERE IT LANDED AND NOT THAT HUGE MUD BOG WHERE THE WATER MAIN BROKE THE OTHER DAY.

Sure enough, in the general area where I’d heard the noise, there was my key on its little dog tag. I’d gotten this little dog tag from one of those machines at Wal-Mart where you put $5 in and get a little engraved tag out.

I should note, as a punchline of sorts, that I’d had this tag engraved with the immortal words “WITH IT OR ON IT.”

I returned home in triumph with my shie–er, key and went on about my business. And I still got to work on time.

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