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Edited on Sun Jan-16-11 05:00 PM by struggle4progress
somewhere in your luggage where you can find them quickly so you aren't always carrying them around in a strange town where you'll never find them again if you drop them, and then on the morning you are going to fly back home you are waiting in your hotel room for the airport shuttle and trying to figure out what is the best thing to do with your keys and you decide to pack them deep inside one of your carry-ons so you'll have them but they won't be a big nuisance while you're going through airport security, and you've got just about everything packed and you decide that it would be nice to clean up the nightly stubble so the nice people at the airport don't think you look like a hung-over wino, which you pretty much do because when you were coming into town the guy in the seat beside you coughed on you for two hours so you've spent the whole week of your conference with chills and aches and a sore throat and coughs and wheezes and sneezes and sleeping twelve hours every night has left big black bags under your eyes, so you grab a fresh razor and make your face baby smooth and also put a little tiny nick in your chin that gushes like a wildcat well, and you finally construct a phony scab out of tiny bits of tissue and while you are doing this the hotel maid knocks on the door and you tell her you are leaving and you grab everything and head down to the lobby where the airport shuttle has arrived fifteen minutes early and has been waiting impatiently for you and all your stuff gets thrown into the back of the shuttle, and you go to the airport and you go through the security line with some of your carry-ons pockets unzipped and you have a long special conversation with a security officer, and then you go sit at the gate and your tissue scab falls off and your chin starts gushing again, so you go through your carry-ons to find more tissue and you blot the gusher for, like, half an hour until it is merely seeping and then you get on the flight and throw stuff in the overhead bin and under the seat, and finally you arrive at the next airport where you go to another gate and open your carry-ons a few times while waiting for the next flight, and then you get on the next flight and throw stuff in the overhead bin and under the seat, and then the flight lands and you go wait in baggage, and everybody gets their baggage and goes away, and you are watching the empty carosel go round and round, and after another ten or fifteen minutes your luggage materializes on the carosel without coming up the chute that you have been standing right in front of, and you think "huh!" but not anything more because it is after midnight and because you still have those chills and aches and a sore throat and coughs and wheezes and sneezes, so you grab your luggage and go wait for the shuttle to parking and you throw your carry-ons onto the shuttle rack and the shuttle stops and you get off with your stuff and walk to your car, and you put all your stuff down and it's time to find your keys, which shouldn't be hard because you can remember exactly where you put them in your carry-ons, but they aren't there, and you go through everything twice, and finally you decide "the hell with it!" because you have secret back-up plans just for brain-dead moments like this when you need duplicate key sets, so you pack your stuff into the back seat and go to pay your parking and there is only one guy in line in front of you but he has turned off his lights and his engine and is out of his car talking to the cashier and he gives her this and she gives him that and he gives her that and she gives him this, only very very slowly with many long gaps and pauses, and finally after about ten minutes they both seem happy and he drives off without turning on his lights, and so you pay the cashier, and you drive home and go inside and take all your stuff to the bedroom and look again through everything for your keys and again you cannot find them, so you make a list of places they could be (hotel? airport shuttle van? airport security? gate at first airport? overhead bin on first plane? gate at second airport? overhead bin on second plane? parking shuttle?) and you decide to call everybody in the morning, and you go to sleep, and you wake up in the middle of the night with a great eureka moment and a completely new but very clear memory of where you put your keys and you excitedly check and they aren't there, and you go back to sleep, and you wake again with a different but very clear memory of where you put your keys and so you excitedly check and they aren't there either, and you go back to sleep and sleep until 3 in the afternoon because you really are dog sick and it's really time to start making lots and lotsa phone-calls if you ever want to see your keys again, and it is going to be a gigantic pain, and you just can't believe you lost your keys, so you decide to check everything for a fifth and sixth time, starting with the place you were originally sure you put them that you have already checked four times, and there they are in plain sight right where you originally thought they would be, and you wonder if TSA would object to the little portable gremlin traps you'd like to put in your luggage
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