The Keys

The Keys

“I don’t remember anything.”

“Jared… honey,” Mom added to calm him down, “You’re not in trouble. I just need my keys so I can drive the car. I know you picked them up because I didn’t, and the only other one is this house right now is Pecky. Pecky wouldn’t pick up keys, cats don’t like keys.”

“Maybe he didn’t know it was keys…”

“No Jared, Pecky knows. He can smell that it’s metal. Honey, just think, did you pick up the keys off the table?”

“No, I did pick up my coloring book, like you told me to.”

“Good boy, maybe the keys were stuck on it. Let’s go look!”

The keys were not there, nor in the crayon box, nor in his room everywhere else they looked.

“Do you remember seeing my keys this morning?” Mom asked, for the zillionth time.

Jared was getting tired of this game. “Let’s go to Grammie’s! Maybe Grammie took them!”

“Jared, Honey… we can’t go to Grammie’s unless I can start the car and I can’t start the car until I find my keys. Are you sure you didn’t play with them this morning?”

“Um… I don’t think so. Is this morning today?”

“Yes Honey, this morning is today, today from when you woke up until now.”

“Then what will it be?”

Still distracted Mom got confused, What?”

“This morning…”

“It will still be this morning…”

“After that what will it be?”

Mom sat down, it was getting deep, and she still had no keys.

“OK, we are going to clean the house!”

“Oh…” Jared said, un-excitedly.

Downtown, Jared’s dad had just found a set of keys in his jacket pocket. “Oops..” he thought, “hope she has another set…” as he stuffed them back in his pocket, and entered the meeting room.