Day 21: Where Are My Keys?

Woke up feeling groggy and tired, scraped myself out of bed and off to work with difficulty, forced myself through it, went to Asda and picked up some bits of shopping and came back and treated myself to a massive cup of tea and some cinnamon whirls to bring myself around. Left the key in the door while I carried shopping inn, no free hand to take it back out with, and remember thinking to myself, I mustn't leave that there. Heard a small noise at the door and went to see what it was, nobody there so must have been the wind. My keys weren't in the lock, so I must have brought them in.

Made my lunch, a very nice ham and mascarpone pasta, and watched something or other on TV before getting ready for work again, got everything together, stuff in my bag, shoes on, ready to go, just need my keys.

Where are my keys?

Now it's a product of my dyslexia that I am particularly adept at losing things. I can lose things within an arms reach. I lose the TV remote several times a night. Whatever it is in your brain that enables you to keep a visual after-image of the last few things you looked at, doesn't exist in mine. So I just tutted and set to looking in the places I might have put them. Kitchen counters, wrong sections of my bag, mantelpiece, draws, down the sides of cushions... Nothing. Starting to panic, I went out to my car, which I'd left open, to see if I'd dropped them there. My neighbour came out to chat about something and I snapped that I couldn't cope with conversation while I was panicking.

I went inside and called work to tell them that I was going to be late, and they said to take it as emergency holiday. I love my employers, for the record. I got changed into jeans more suitable for rummaging and, a little calmer, I went to my neighbours to explain and apologise for snapping, and she came back and ended up helping me search, still to no avail. 

Around this time I voiced the deeply paranoid sounding thought that during that brief time my keys were available, someone had taken them. It sounded absurd even saying it, but I had to admit it as a possibility. My neighbour suggested I disable the car somehow so nobody could take it, a good thought but one I was unsure and unwilling to have to do given my keys would probably turn up in the freezer or something. She had to go and see to her son, and I carried on searching.

After failing for another little while I stared into my engine, knowing nothing about cars. I had hoped a rotor arm or spark plug or something that I could easily remove would be visible, but everything seemed to be sealed up. Damn modern cars.I went back in, with the intention of finding a website that would tell me how to do it, and got sidetracked by clearing the passage to my unused other door to use in the meantime, to keep the house secure (as I'd have to keep the other double locked, as someone possibly had a key). I sat there moving shoes, lots of shoes, out of the way.

And heard my car start up in the driveway.

My heart lurched. Suddenly on pure adrenalin I ran out of the door in time to see my own car reverse from my driveway. I stepped in front of it, waving my arms for them to stop, getting a good view of its two passengers. They drove up to me, pushing me back. I wasn't moving, and banged my hands on the bonnet. This is my car, and you aren't having it. The car scooped me up, feet off the floor, and I travelled on the bonnet some distance.

Then I blacked out.