You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy.™
Losing your keys.
It launches a Lost Psychosis that is hard to explain.
And this feeling is triggered the moment you realize that certain something is missing.
For me it starts about 10pm Saturday night. That’s about the time a buddy drops me off at my doorstep.
“See ya,” he says, backing out of my driveway.
I suddenly feel a twinge of panic shoot through my body.
It’s electric, like that falling jerk you get in the crook of your neck just as you are about to fall asleep.
“Wait!” I scream.
He slams on the brakes.
He looks at me curiously, leaning out the window.
“What?”
“My keys. I can’t find my keys.”
He laughs out loud as I begin patting myself down like a police officer frisking a perp.
I’m patting down my pockets. Front and back and back and front again.
“Damn!”
I start patting down my ass. I’m patting down my stomach.
Why I think my keys are hiding in my ass or my stomach, I’ll never know. All the same I’m rubbing my whole body, feeling for the keys. It’s like I am a geisha girl rubbing oil on a customer who just happens to be me.
My buddy turns on the car’s dome light and scans the seat and floor.
“Not here, man.”
I pat myself down again. I pat down my arms and I’m wearing a short sleeve shirt. I pat down my neck and face. I shove my entire hand into my pocket searching for something that has vanished into the Saturday night Ether.
And this is the Lost Psychosis that humans feel when they lose something. It’s a frenzied, unexplained craziness that is one part anxiety and 2 parts mental instability.
The craziness that comes with losing something is a universal constant that knows no geographical boundary.
Humans will look in the strangest of places when that something is missing. They’ll search in pockets and under the couch and inside the freezer. There is no more rhyme and reason when that something is missing and you have to find it.
When you have the Psychosis of Lost invading your brain, you will look over and over in the same spot even if you just searched that very spot five minutes earlier.
That means looking in a drawer. then looking on the front lawn. Then going back to that same drawer and looking in it again, because it is so capacious, you might have missed it the first time you looked.
Yeah right!
Few things are as frustrating as losing something you need. You try and re-trace your steps in your mind.
Where was I last? Could I have left it there?
“Where’d you lose it?” some moron always asks.
Well if i knew that dumb ass, it wouldn’t be lost now would it.
I wave goodbye to my buddy who heads off down the street.
I’m alone, in the dark. It’s a bad feeling.
Luckily I have hidden a spare house key so I let myself in.
But the anxiety begins to manifest. The house is dark and quiet and the Lost Psychosis is raging.
I get angry. My car is parked in the garage and it will remain parked in the garage till I find the keys, the only set I have.
Stupid!
I’ve got the Lost Psychosis so bad, I start looking for my keys inside the house, even though I used the keys to lock the front door to start the night.
I mean I locked my door. I put them in my pocket. I left the neighborhood. My keys are not in this house. Any fool knows that. It doesn’t matter. I know my keys are probably 10 miles away in a parking lot kicked into a sewer, but still, here I am, inside my house, looking inside my house for an item that can’t possibly be inside my house.
Can you say futile?
That’s how bad this episode of LOST Psychosis has become.
I might as well look in Saudi Arabia or London Tower, or the Kremlin. The keys are as likely to be there as they are in this house. They are not here. Deal with it. But the urge to search is too strong.
I open a drawer. Yeah like they’re in there.
Fool. Frustrated I call the last place I was at. The phone rings and rings. No luck.
I sit on the couch angry and befuddled.
The psychosis is growing. I begin to simmer, how will I get to work? How will I go shopping? I had a lot of things planned tomorrow and now my day will be replaced by phone calls and Lost paranoia.
I force myself to sleep, but I end up dreaming about my keys. Who has them?
Are they cool? Did they find them and do the right thing and turn them in? Or were they miserable evil drunks and they hurled them into the boulevard to let a million tires run over them.
I wake to the unsettle feeling that my day is all ready going to hell in a hand basket.
As I watch the 3rd half of hour of SportsCenter in a row, tapping my foot nervously, drinking extra bold Starbucks coffee, I begin to think, again, for the 20th time.
Where in the world did I lose them? They were in my pocket. I wasn’t driving. There was no reason to take them out. Why did I take them out? Did I take them out? Did they fall out? Are they in the street? Are they in a restaurant bathroom?
GRRRRRRR!
I am a mentally impaired Inspector Clouseau wondering where I zigged and my keys zagged without my knowledge.
I’ll say this now. If you have your keys, then consider yourself blessed. You can open your door and drive your car and get into your p.o. box. Enjoy your freedom. Be happy that you are not overwhelmed with an uncontrollable Lost Psychosis that consumes your brain like a flesh eating bacteria.
As the 4th episode of Sportscenter begins, I begin to pat myself down again, like the idiot savant I am. I’m wearing completely different clothes and for some reason I’m hoping that I will find my keys in a pocket of a pair of pants that I haven’t worn for a week.
Schmuck!I text my buddy: Hey, do me a favor. Now that it’s day light, search the passenger seat again. See if they are there.
He texts me back. Call the restaurant we were in. I think I saw them on the bar.
I read his text thinking he’s just humoring to give me false hope.
I check my watch. It’s 9:00 am. Maybe they are open. I call the number again.
“Hi this is Nicole. Can I help you?”
“Yeah, I was in your place last night and I think I might have left my keys there.”
“Let me check.”
She puts me on hold. Some ridiculous music for the establishment blares through my speaker.
A moment passes and she gets back on the line.
“What do they look like?” she says.
Huh?
“They look like keys,” I say not sure how to describe them. “Black grip. Silver. Bronze. You know. Keys.”
“Yep. They’re here. Just come on down,” she says.
A feeling of relief showers me. It’s like spraying icy Aloe Vera on a sunburn.
The Psychosis melts away peacefully, like the sun poking through a dissipating storm cloud.
I laugh out loud.
“You are a life saver,” I yell into the phone.
“You’re welcome sir. Just come on down and get them. We open at 11am.”
“Easier said than done,” I chuckle. “Those are the only keys i have to my car.”
She laughs. “Well they’ll be here when you get a ride,”
“OK, thanks,” I say hanging up.
I text my buddy. “Hey dude. I need a ride…..”
And that is how I spent the better part of my Sunday.
So if you did anything fun Sunday that didn’t involve hunting down a lost set of keys, then consider yourself lucky.
Lost Psychosis.
It’s crazy.™