You’re at work and you get a phone call at about the time he gets home from school. That’s good. You like to know that he’s home safely. He’s quite excited and breathlessly tells me that when he got home he didn’t have his keys and he couldn’t find the spare keys, ‘because you keep moving them’. Side note, when you’ve got a teen it’s ALWAYS your fault. Never mind that I moved the keys once – which I told him about – and I moved them back to their original spot – which I also told him about, and showed him as well. And never mind that he’d used these keys a couple of weeks ago and promised me he’d put them back after he used them.
He climbed over the gate. I’m not sure why as we have 2 side gates that can be opened fairly easily.
He found a window around the back that wasn’t locked and managed to crawl through it and get inside. He was glad that on this particularly hot day he didn’t have to catch the bus to my work to get my keys.
Now, this window that was left open? We’d opened it 2 months ago when I had a party so an extension cord could fit through it to power some lights I set up out the back. I’d been asking him for the 2 months to make sure he’d locked it properly. But lucky he hadn’t hey?
When I got home from work, we looked in the spare key vicinity to try and find them. They definitely weren’t there.
He decided to look in his room because they might be there. Note to self. Steal keys occasionally and make him look for them in his room so it gets tidied! I can live with clothes on the floor until he can’t find something. I don’t like empty or nearly empty food packets, or dirty plates and glasses because I want to keep the mice and cockroaches away.
I had a look in the key bowl by the front door. Lo and behold there they were. However, he still couldn’t find his own keys.
But his keys turned up in his pencil case as he discovered the next day at school.
All’s well that ends well. All house keys are accounted for. The teen’s room is relatively tidy. All windows are locked and secured.
Until the next time.
Oh so very glad that the keys were all accounted for!!
When I lived in Sydney, my flatmate lost the keys to her car (and house) the day we were to have a weekend away at the coast. After much discussion, we decided that if we were going to get burgled we would get burgled and went in my car.
When we returned, we found her car keys – in the boot of her car – parked directly in front of our house.
Sometimes providence is smiling.