My Gut

It’s funny how our minds decide who we like. It’s just a guttural reaction, I look at someone and I’ve already decided if I like them or not. We lost our keys tonight. To our car. The only set we have. The other set I lost one Sunday morning right before I was supposed to depart on a road trip. And never found. After looking for almost two hours.

This set I actually just lost last night in the grocery store. Ran in for some yogurts at around 11 pm. The only thing my son currently has on his lunch menu. Paid for the yogurts. Fished for my keys. Nothing. After 30 frantic minutes of retracing my steps from the car to the yogurt aisle, I discovered them on the bottom of a trash bin.

But that’s not what I’m here to write about. Tonight we lost the keys again. The third time this year, the second time this week. I mean what are the chances? We had a picnic in the park, took a short stroll, and decided to go home. My husband reached in his pocket for the keys but alas. Not in my bag or the stroller either. And there was no garbage bin there.

The arboretum on a day we didn't lose our keys

During our search, I bumped into the carrier of the keys of the park, who informed me he was closing up at 8. That’s pretty much all he said. And maybe a tilted head in sympathy for the lost keys. But I liked him the second I saw him. And I don’t even know why. He didn’t do anything for me.  If I want to analyze it I can say he had an open face. A kind face. But he did nothing to help really. And still, I liked him.

An hour and a half into the search, I called Chaverim to come unlock our car in the hopes that the keys had fallen into the trunk. As I saw one of the two guys who had come I instantly disliked him. For no reason. Here was a guy who drove from his home or wherever he was all the way to the park just to unlock my car and I did not like him.

He said we’ve been here a while, the dispatcher didn’t have your number. I said I gave it to her. He said, really? Raised his eyebrows even. My reaction, inappropriate as it was to my possible savior, was, Are you calling me a liar? I tried to cover up with a snicker and a thanks for coming but my dislike deepened further the more he spoke. And he was helping me. He helped me look in the trunk for the keys and in the back seat and under the car seats and all. He even fixed the installation on my carseats. But still no like surfaced.

I suppose sometimes I’m wrong. Sometimes I meet people, my gut says to like them, and I change my mind. Or I don’t like them and decide they are the love of my life. But we did bump into the grounds guy once more. And he still didn’t do much to help. He didn’t bug us to leave by the 8:00 closing time, true. But he didn’t do much else.

And we still didn’t find our keys. I have no idea where they could possibly be.

I wish my gut told me things like that.