I am searching for my car keys.
I have been searching for my car keys for 20 minutes. I am now swearing excessively while searching for my car keys. A flock of F words is bursting from my mouth and circling my head like swifts on methamphetamine. They burst forth in a stream of language at a speed and a repetition (somewhere around 150bpm, I'm guessing) that any passing Burnley DJ could probably put a donk on it. [1]
The day before, I remember, I had the keys in my bed. So that's where I am triangulating my search. The duvet is off the bed. The sheet is off the mattress. The mattress is off the bed frame. So far all I've discovered is my capacity to turn the air blue. It's amazing how many baroque sentences you can extrapolate out of one four-letter word. That's the beauty of the English language, I guess.
This is how the world ends. With the misplacement of a key. My world anyway. For want of a key the battle - in this case the school run - is lost.
I am a lazy, disorganised, forgetful man. But I hide this - mostly from myself, it should be said; no one else is fooled - by small acts of repeated orderliness. And so the keys, the glasses, the mobile phone, the wallet - all the things I need for my everyday survival - are placed in the same spot every night. Just so I can find them the next morning without any memory required.
This is a system that works well except on those days when I have not stuck to the plan; when I have left the door open for my lazy, disorganised forgetfulness to sneak in like a monster from a horror movie. A really scary horror movie. [2]
Because when it does happen - and it will - I have no clue. I am lost. I remember when I was a student I misplaced a shoe. I only had one pair so this was serious. For some reason there was only one shoe in the hall. I spent two days looking for the other one. I didn't leave the house. I couldn't leave the house.
From such small things will civilisation fall apart. Probably.
My system, if it even deserves such a description, is clearly a bandage across a gaping psychic wound. I am on the edge of a huge black hole and the danger I stumble and fall off the edge is ever present. It only needs a misplaced key for me to plunge head first into utter, disorientating, debilitating despair.
J asks me where the spare key is. "I lost that long ago," I say between sweary words, sifting through the junk under the bed. I hit my chest in frustration.
And feel the key in my shirt pocket where I obviously put it earlier.
I don't tell her this until much later.
[1] A dance reference now so dated it is surely due a revival any day now. What do you mean Mark Radcliffe got there before me?
[2] You know, something like Pitch Perfect 2.
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