Search and destroy missions

King has a propensity for misplacing his  keys, my  keys and the  keys of others. Some might think it is an act of forgetfulness, but I truly believe he does it on purpose because he enjoys watching me come unglued.

Since we have been married I have crawled through  more windows, used more coat hangers to break into cars, and dismantled more car interiors than I care to remember.

There was the time when we were moving from Ohio back to Michigan when King lost his car keys while we were packing the moving van and loading cars. We unloaded everything, went through boxes and furniture and ended up dismantling the back seat of the car to get into the trunk -- only to find the keys on the roof of the small shed next to the driveway.

Or the time he picked up my sister's car from the repair shop and then left to play golf . . .with her keys tucked neatly into his golf bag.

And speaking of golf . . . he is forever misplacing his cell phone or wallet in his golf bag. A golf bag must have at least 100 little zippered compartments and bottomless side pockets where, despite my having been on a search and destroy mission 10 minutes previously, he seems to find the missing object. This is after I have dumped clubs, tees and golf balls all over the living room. He simply shakes his head and says, "See it is right here. Why didn't you check this pocket?" It has reduced me to tears on numerous occasions.

The keys are generally kept in one of about 50 places . . .the kitchen table, the dining room table, the book stand, the desk, his dresser, his coat pocket, in the car console, on the floor of the car, on the seat of the car. It is my daily mission to find the current location. I suspect he does this to watch me run from place to place and go in and out of the house looking for them.

I don't need things to be neat and orderly, I just want him to pick one place -- any place -- to leave the damn keys so I don't have to have frantic mornings looking for them.

Life used to be so much more simple. . . When I was growing up Dad had a simple place to keep the car keys (and I don't believe we even had house keys). The keys were kept in the ignition. His belief was if the car was in the driveway and no one had need of it, it was there for the taking.

But that freedom came with a caveat: Dad's rules were to be followed -- to the letter. And he had just two: 1) We were not to "ride the circuit" on Eighth Street in Holland, and 2) we were not to ride on motorcycles. (His belief was girls were not to "advertise" themselves as "available" by looking for boys on Eighth Street).

"I don't care if you want to hang out in the Blue Tempo in Saugatuck -- if that's what you want to do that's fine," he would say. "But if I ever hear of you riding on Eighth Street you are grounded for life." He meant it too. I don't know if he realized the Blue Tempo was one of the first openly gay bars in the state, so looking back, his point was rather moot, but we got the gist of it.. . stay off Eighth Street.

As an aside, I know a lot of young women from Hamilton who met their future husbands on Eighth Street. I met King at a bar in Mount Pleasant, although he claims he would have eventually introduced himself in the library.

Had I known at the time his propensity for lost keys . . . I probably would have married him anyway.