This One's For You, Baby

First of all, I have been admonished to publicly apologize for something I (allegedly) did.  So let me get that out of the way:

Cody, I am sorry for serving you pliers in your cereal bowl this morning instead of actual cereal.  I thought that perhaps I would do something to better help you SEE the pliers, since they have been lying smack in the middle of the breakfast table for the past five days and I thought that perhaps your eyesight was failing you.  Or that you maybe you thought a little fairy followed you around to pick up such items that you haphazardly leave around the house.  And you know, I don't know if we've ever actually talked about it, so I don't know if you realize that there is no fairy.  Sad!  But true.  And I can't hold you responsible for information you don't have.   So I put the pliers there in good faith.  However, I can see now that the pliers truly WERE invisible in Cody-Vision, and that it ISN'T your fault you can't see them, and that it wasn't a big deal ANYWAY, and that if I see them laying there I should just put them up myself, GEEZ.  Also that your cereal tasted like pliers, and that you don't appreciate it.  All points well taken!

Moving on.

But not moving on to subjects other than Cody.

The other day, Cody lost his keys.  This is not an abnormal occurrence altogether, but it was (as these things usually are) an inconvenience.  Luckily, we (me) in the Carter household are prepared for such events and carry extra keys just in case.  I've had to drive to sandwich shops in the middle of a workday, Cody's office in the middle of the night, and Cody's parents house in the middle of a nap, all to retrieve and/or deposit the correct keys to Cody.  I don't mind.  I have this annoying little habit of not checking the mailbox for a week and then dragging all the bills out that are due in, like, 15 minutes and throwing them all at Cody and running away with my hands over my ears.  It's really endearing.  So I can handle a little key-lossage every once in a while.

So anyway, Cody's lost his keys again.  We had seriously just come into the house from eating lunch or something, and he had been driving, using the keys.  We walked outside to get the dog, and then, less than five minutes later, Cody was scrambling around, claiming that he had lost his keys, and could I please help him find them instead of just throwing the ball for the dog?  I don't remember where he had to go, but it was urgent and immediate and important that he not be late.  And I needed my car for something, and so I told him to just use the extra set of keys.  Which was when he informed me that he didn't know where they were, because he had used them just the week before when he lost his keys (in a separate and totally unrelated losing incident), but then he found his keys and put the spare somewhere and couldn't remember exactly where.

That's when I (helpfully!) suggested that he couldn't have lost his keys; that it was completely impossible for anyone to lose something in such a short amount of time.  All he had to do was think back on exactly what he had done since stepping out of the car, and in one of those steps, he would find his keys.  This technique is referred to in our household as the Jedi Mind Trick.  I'm not sure how this moniker came about except that it had something to do with me telling Cody that tracing your steps backwards is a widely used device for finding lost items, and him saying something like "Who can remember crap like that?  I'm not a Jedi Knight."

So, we were Jedi Mind Tricking it.  Which wasn't too daunting, given that we had been outside the car (which had been driven with The Keys) for all of five minutes.  We traced back all the steps, and what was really awesome about the whole exercise was how Cody kept reminding me that A) the Jedi Mind Trick never works and B) he was really late, could I please just give him my keys?   Which I would have happily done, not being some kind of hateful shrew, but I really did have things I needed to do that afternoon and they weren't the kind of things that I could accomplish on a bicycle.  If I even had a bicycle.  Which I do not.

Eventually time won out (doesn't it always) and I had to relinquish my keys.  I was more than a little concerned that I would never see them again and that I might be trapped in my house forever, given the fact that Cody had just beaten all previously existing records and become the World Champion of Losing Everything.   I spent the rest of the afternoon (read: about 30 minutes) looking for his keys, treasuring the thought that maybe my day wouldn't be a total waste if I could only find the keys and then gloat later about how he just hadn't looked hard enough.  But I couldn't find those suckers anywhere.

I was truly amazed.  All he had done was walk from the car to the backyard, stand on the porch for a couple of minutes, and mess with the newly painted screen door.  And then freak out about how his keys had disappeared.  I usually scoff at Cody's absentmindedness, but this time I had sympathize.  I had looked everywhere, really carefully, and had come up with absolutely nothing.  The keys were gone.

We eventually gave up, and made copies of all the keys (again) and moved on with life.  A couple of weeks later I called Cody from work to tell him that I was stuck with a customer and would be a little later than expected.  He responded with this:

"Well, when you get home, you are not going to believe what I found.  Seriously, it is so incredible, you will not believe it."

Of course this piqued my curiosity and after fruitlessly begging him to just tell me what he'd found over the phone, I hurried home.  I found Cody in the backyard, where he took one look at me, said nothing, and held out his hand.  This is what he'd found (click to enlarge):

As you've probably guessed, those are The Keys, wrapped up in a ball of painter's tape, found in the deepest recesses of the woods behind our house.  Apparently, as Cody was talking to me on the screen porch for those two minutes, he had peeled tape off the screen door, balled up the tape in the same hand as he held the keys, and thrown the whole thing into the woods.  All without noticing the keys.  In his hand.

I've got to hand it to the guy.  That is impressive.  I don't think many of us could aspire to be that absentminded, even if we spent the rest of our lives trying.

Comments

[Amy]

Unbelievable. I've had a little post waiting on me -- complete with a photo of where Kyle had stuck his "lost" socks two days ago -- that I was going to publish this evening. And then you come up with this, and now Kyle's amazing scatterbrainedness is somehow diminished by Cody's even more remarkable scatterbrainedness. So, thanks, Elise, and thanks, Cody. My post-in-waiting has been officially puny-fied.

[rita]

Impressive and prize worthy. Luckily he doesn't have to carry a purse, because those little suckers are like portable black-holes, all contents within disappear.

[kyle]

wow, that is genius. or the opposite of. either way, it's amazing.

[Katy]

OMG, hilarious. I love this story. It's totally something I would do...

[jonniker]

I didn't guess that they were the keys! I didn't! I was surprised! SHOCKED! Also, um, it's something I would do, and I totally understand how that happens. I once put my keys into an orange juice container and threw them away in a parking garage garbage can. Oh, and they were RENTAL car keys. I retraced my steps and thought, wait, I was drinking orange juice. ORANGE JUICE. And lo, the keys. There they were.

Oh Cody. I understand.

But what made him look in the woods? Dear God.

[Cody]

Well, I was actually looking in the yard where the yard becomes woods. And I wasn't looking for the keys, I was looking for stuff that might be unpleasant to hit with a lawn mower. Then I saw a big ball of tape, picked it up, thought "this is very heavy for tape"......eureka!

[Laurie]

Too funny! And hey- think of it this way- now you have an EXTRA extra set of keys! And I still want to hear where the socks were hiding, Amy!

[elise]

See, Amy, everyone wants to know. Tell us. Tell us of the socks.

[Alyndabear]

That's talent, right there. I could never manage to do that, even if I tried!

[Amy]

OK, I posted my little story about Kyle's socks. Not nearly as out-there as Cody's, though.
tadpolish.blogspot.com

[beck]

I am all astonishment!

[wordgirl]

What??? He threw a wad of painter's tape into the woods? Losing the keys was karma's way of "schooling" Cody about littering.

[Chaos Control]

This could be a story right out of my household. My husband loses his keys, his cell phone and his palm pilot daily. Daily. Unbelievable.

And I agree with karma's lesson about littering as brought up by wordgirl!

[EDW]

That's hilarious! When we were in college, a bunch of us hometown friends were hanging around my parents' house, waiting to go out. Our friend Chris had his keys on one of those lanyards and he was swinging it around. Then suddenly, he lost his grip and they flew. We looked for probably an hour - now, this was the front lawn. There was one set of bushes, and lots of open, flat grass. There were 5 of us looking. We got behind the small bushes with flashlights. We never found them, that night or in all the years my mom and dad lived there, and we would continue to look just for fun. One day they'll tear down the house and there will be this set of keys that belongs to a Mustang!

[janet]

this totally goes in the record books for insanity and hilarity!

also, you have pretty nails.

[Helen]

Just fabulous, how lucky you are to be married to such a blogworthy husband, mine is a bit dull when it comes to using him for blog fodder. This story has to be one of his finest though, Cody you are a legend.