By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

I still remember how I deliberated for a minute about whether to take them or not to take them.It was like the button you see on a wall that says “never push” and yet you do. And so take them I did.

By 8 am with two sets of car keys in my bag, I’d done enough errands for someone driving two cars. I’d had my blood taken, picked up a Smoothie, called my mother, spoken to my best friend, and was on my way to the gym.

I was putting my coat into my gym locker, praising myself for my efficiency when my cellphone rang.  It was my husband.  “By any chance, do you have my car keys?” he asked.

Uh oh. I started to think back to that hook.  It had never occurred that I’d run off with something that wasn’t actually mine. Did I have his keys?  Hmm.  Well, yeah.  In a real stroke of organization the night before, I’d put my second set into the kitchen drawer where they’d be safe.  I remembered that but assumed by some weird kind of magic they’d materialized on the hook.  Let’s just say they hadn’t.

Now in most cases when people buy or lease cars, they have two sets of keys.  There is a good reason for this.  BMW probably never foresaw the particulars of this key fiasco.  But people run off with keys all the time.  They, as in me, take off into restaurants with the key fobs in their pockets, so their husbands, as in Hal, can park but have no keys to hand off to a parking attendant or if they’re lucky enough to find a space, lock the car with.  Yes, this has happened to us on multiple occasions.  Does it happen to other couples? Hmm. The bottom line is, spares are a savior.

In the course of lending cars to four sons, Hal and I had been down to one set of car keys each.  That’s the sorry background to this story. And while I now have a new leased car and two shiny sets of keys, Hal still has his measly one set, and it was now in my  gym locker.  “I’ve got to get to work.  You’re going to have to come home,” he said “I’m sorry about your class.”

In the scheme of tragedies, missing one session of Pilates is hardly sob worthy, but then I had a revelation.  I told him I didn’t have to miss anything.  He could Uber to the gym and pick up his keys. In our infinite wisdom, he and I both agreed this was a wonderful idea.  From the gym, he’d be closer to the office.  I didn’t have to miss my class; he’d be able to get to work on time.  All I had to do was leave his car keys at the front desk of the gym.  I got off the phone, handed his keys over to the person at the desk, and went on my not-so-merry way to the treadmill where I eked out ten minutes doing cardio and headed down to the Pilates room.

When I was in the middle of what’s known as the one hundred with my trainer, my husband  walked into the room; his face read “one hundred lashes with a wet noodle,” not I’m lovestruck and thrilled to see you exercising, Second Wife.  Yes, he had his keys.  What he and I conveniently overlooked was that he didn’t have his car.  It was home in the garage where he’d left it because, you guessed it, he didn’t have his keys.

Hal and I are very well matched.  Our friends tell me they think we’re oddly similar.   We both like Netflix mysteries, new dramas on Broadway, and sitting on the couch on Sundays doing the crossword and seeing who we know in the Times wedding announcements.   “Sports for chicks” is what my late husband called that section; okay, maybe that was harsh. But the thing is, the debacle with the keys never would have happened in my first marriage.  There were schedules.  There was order.  The keys would have never have been unmarked on the hook waiting to be grabbed. They would have been set purposely by a briefcase and long gone, in the ignition of a car idling by the Holland Tunnel by 7 in the morning. That precision was a great thing when my kids were small. 

But the boys are grown now.   Things are different, more laid back, less but also more chaotic.  But it’s all in a good way.

“This is a little like “The Stupids Try To Go To Work”,” I said to Hal.  I picked up my phone to call myself an Uber. He laughed as I handed him my keys, and he took off in my new car.