I lost my keys the other day. And not just any keys, THE keys. In other words, every key that I need in my day to day life was lost. This is how the events unfolded that fateful April day.
Amanda and I left the apartment and went out to the end of the sidewalk to wait for Stefano to come pick us up in the car. Stefano had not arrived yet, so I seated myself on the edge of a flower bed and began to play with the snails.
To play with snails you need two hands you see. I already had one hand free, so I was halfway to escargot bliss, but my other hand was busy carry the keys. Hmm. I must free this hand to play with the snails. So I gently sat the keys down on the edge of the flower bed and began my joyful excursion with my one-footed friends.
Not five minutes later, Stefano and Rina pull up in the car. Amanda and I hope right up, bound across the street and jump in the car. Yup. You guessed it. I left the keys sitting right next to my old playmates, and the plot thickens.
I don’t realize my keys are missing until we are in town. By then I just decide to go ahead and do what we planned to do in town, then return home and look for the keys. I mean, come on, what could happen to the keys in less than a two hour period?
We return to the scene of the crime, it is dark now but the parking lot is fairly well lit, so we are able to do a good ground search. Nothing. We go home defeated and hoping for a better day.
The next day Amanda and I placed lost posters in the area with our cell phone number. It was a long shot, but worth a try. I did get a call, but it wasn’t my keys.
To make a long story short, this is how we finally tracked down the missing keys.
Fabrizio, one of my friends, and I were walking to the house to pick up something we had forgotten. On the way there I tell him that I want to search the area one more time to see if we had missed them in our previous searches.
As we are looking around, a couple with an 8 year old boy was entering into the apartments. They ask if we are looking for a set of keys, we reply in the positive and they tell us that their son had found them the other night. They describe the keys and sure enough, they are them.
However, their son had given them to a friend to take to the apartment complex office. He knows the kids first name only and doesn’t know where he lives. He does, however, know another friend who knows this other friend’s last name. We go up with the family and find out the friends last name. They describe the area where they think he lives and wish us good luck.
We run over to the area where the boy supposedly lives. No go, we just couldn’t find where the boys lives. We see two girls sitting outside and ask if they know this boy. They say they do and then they accompany us to his apartment.
The boy is home, as is his mother. That is the good news. The bad news is that he left the keys on a wall close to the office because there were other kids wanting to play with them. He describes the wall where he left them and we run over there to see if by chance they are still there.
We arrive, find the wall, but do not find the keys. I was getting tired and just a little bit frustrated. However, I had one more idea. Maybe, just maybe, somebody picked them up in the area and placed a found note on one of the doors. We search and this time, we find.
The note describes the keys, and they are mine. We go up to the 11th floor and ring the bell. A young man answers the door and hands over the keys. Finally, the keys have made it home.
That is the last time I play with snails.