Thursday, June 2, 2011

My Husband's Missing Car Keys

Two weekends ago on the one weekend since the beginning of April that was rain-free, my husband helped me with all of the outside tasks that needed to be done before he went on an extended work trip in Mali - in northern Africa.  He had to leave for the airport at 2:00 PM on Sunday, so we didn't have much time. 

My husband is normally very focused at work (he is a computer nerd deluxe) but not so much on things that require physical labor.  (This is not a put-down, just a fact - he would agree.)

He actually did an amazing job that weekend digging up a rotten shrub, cleaning the gutters, trimming tree branches away from the house, and running what probably seemed like a million errands.  I was very impressed that he stuck with it and had a very good attitude about it.  There was not one complaint from him or me.

I remember talking to him while he finished digging up the rotten bush - it smelled like a dead animal.  (In my defense, I dug up half of it even with my bad foot.)  His car keys were dangling out of his pocket.  About 30 minutes later, the rot was bagged up and his keys were gone.  He insisted they could not possibly be in the rotten mess he had just bagged.  It wasn't possible.  It just wasn't.  He must have put it down somewhere. 

While he was gone, I looked everywhere - the mulch, the garage, the laundry, everywhere except the garbage cans.  I turned everything upside down looking for my missing phone - it was definitely not in the house.  I offered to look through the garbage on a Wednesday - it was garbage day.  I opened the can and thought I was going to vomit.  He sent me a message thanking me, saying I am a very kind person to do this for him.  The more I thought about the comment, the more pissed off I got.  Why didn't he look for it on Sunday before it had the opportunity to bake in the sun for three days?  So I saved the can with the rotten mess for him. 

He came back from Africa yesterday because my son had some medical issues.  It was garbage night again. I reminded him to look through the garbage before the trash guy came.  He said no.  He said it was not possible it was in the cans.  But the week before he encouraged and thanked me for being willing to do it for him.  This made me doubly pissed, as you can imagine and he cannot understand.  So I took the cans to the curb - all of them.  He could just go on an adventure to get every key reproduced and spend a fortune buying new remote controls for the cars and paying a locksmith to re-key our safe deposit box at the bank.

This morning, he went outside to bring the keys in.  They were in the bottom of one of the cans.  The garbage man clearly had mercy on him and didn't throw them in the back of the truck.  I wouldn't blame him - it was a rotten mess that must have smelled like a two week old decomposing corpse by now.

My husband's response:  "Well, I knew I didn't put them in the bags...."  No, he did not say, "I am sorry, you were right, I should have looked. They were right where you said they were."  None of that, no apologies at all.  No acceptance that I was right and he was wrong.

At least he has his keys today and we don't have to shell out money to get them remade.  Unfortunately for him, I am kind of irritated.  And not likely to forgive him very soon.  Lucky for him, I have a terribly bad memory.  Maybe I will forget by Monday.

3 comments:

  1. Well, that's a man for you. Sorry doesn't exist in their vocabulary.

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  2. Great story. I liked the part where you took ALL the cans to the curb. Is that also some sort of metaphor? :)

    I'd normally expect a "computer nerd deluxe" to be on the logical side. For some reason he wasn't facing up to certain facts regarding where logic suggested the keys might be.

    Probably about 15 years ago I locked my keys in the car at a major league baseball game. The pain of the event is seared in my brain. To this day I can't lock ANY door without first physically holding my keys in my hand. Pain is usually a wonderful teacher.

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  3. First I have to say, I can now only post comments on my own blog anonymously...seriously?

    @shelly - he's actually the sweetest guy ever and says sorry even when he doesn't mean it - on this whole keys in the garbage fiasco, he will not concede I was right. We are equally stubborn and have produced an offspring who is doubly stubborn. God help us!

    @shouts - no metaphors here, all true. We have three gigantic garbage cans, which is ludicrous and wrong for a family of five - we likely fill one a week with diapers. The stench and keys were in the third, normally unused can, which I saved for him. I locked my child in the car TWICE before I learned. The police were very nice and broke into it for me while I cried like a little girl.

    -Tonja

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