The Mystery of the Extra Keys

Yesterday morning, before leaving for Trinity, I took my wallet, my hairbrush, my hand sanitizer, my iPhone and my car keys out of my purse and put them into a smaller red tote bag. I also organized my camera bag with essentials for the day. During the day, however, I never took the red canvas bag out of the car. I stowed it, where it wouldn't be visible, in the back seat and just carried my camera bag.

This morning, as I was getting ready to leave for church I put the camera case, the red bag, my purse and my Bible tote bag on the table to re-distribute things for the day. I opened my camera bag and took out a few things that had accumulated in there yesterday. I emptied out some extraneous papers and items from my Bible bag. I decided to carry the red canvas bag to church, but wanted to take a few extra things that were still in my purse. The last thing I did was pick up the keys from the table and drop them into my red bag. Then I tidied everything up and put the other bags away.

A little later I glanced toward the kitchen, and there, on the counter, were my keys. "WAIT!" my confused brain screamed, "I just put my keys into the red bag." So I looked in the bag. There was a set of keys. Two Toyota car keys and a house key. They didn't belong to me. They didn't belong to Dan. We don't own a Toyota. On close inspection, these keys didn't look a whole lot like mine, except they were on a carabiner clip, just like mine are. My habit is to clip them to the ring at the base of my purse strap, so I don't misplace them. The strange thing was that, with all of the bag-shuffling I had done, I didn't even know which bag they had come from or, for that matter, whether they had just been on the table all along.

When Dan came out of the bedroom, I asked him if he knew anything about these strange keys. He had never seen them.

All the way to church I was mentally running through scenarios, trying to solve the mystery of the keys. Had some stranger somehow entered our apartment and forgotten his keys on our table? (That was a freaky thought!) Had I picked up the keys at the Trinity site somehow? Did I take them from the Owl Cafe? Did they belong to someone at work? If so, how had they come into my possession? Was I, subconsciously a kleptomaniac? (Okay, that might have been an even freakier thought than the stranger theory.) How would I ever get them back to their owner if I didn't know where they had come from?

When we arrived at the church building, I went directly to our Bible class, but Dan stopped to visit with Wayne. Wayne is probably the person who best has a finger on the pulse of the congregation. He always knows what's happening. In their casual conversation, Dan mentioned that we'd found some keys. "Christie S. lost some keys last week, Wayne responded." Dan asked Wayne what kind of car Christie drives. "A Toyota." Mystery probably solved, Dan thought.

After talking with Christie, we confirmed that they were her keys, and that was the start to solving the mystery. On Wednesday night, Christie and I had sat next to each other, at a round table, during Bible class. Apparently I'd picked up her keys when class was over and, absent-mindedly thinking they were mine, dropped them into my Bible tote or clipped them onto my purse strap.

I was extremely embarrassed! Christie, on the other hand, was thrilled that I had her keys. She had already inquired about replacing the car keys. It was going to cost her $125 a piece! Luckily she hadn't yet proceeded with that expensive proposition.