When cleaning out a drawer last weekend, D and I found a bunch of backup keys entrusted to us by friends over the years. Pulling each one off the ring and flinging it into the trash can, I recited the reason for its disposal. “This post office box is no longer Steve’s, this is to a door that had its locks changed, this car flooded, this house … this house.” This house in Lakeview flooded almost to the roof, had its front door bashed in by looters, served long and hard as a mold petridish and, six months ago, was demolished to make way for its neighbor’s expansion. While wanting to hang onto the key as a pre-Katrina keepsake, I hurriedly threw it out. There is much to learn from the past, but no salvation in clinging to a time we cannot recover. We look forward.
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A trio from the International Association of Police Chiefs convention was discovered lost and wandering in the CBD last evening. “Which way to Bourbon Street?” the elder spokesperson asked. “Thattaway,” I said, pointing downriver. The blank stares prompted me to expand further, “Walk this way, cross Canal and then you’re in the Quarter.” Still no sign of data registration. “Ok, see that street you just walked here from named Carondelet? Go back to it and walk towards Canal St. On the other side of Canal, the streets change names and Carondelet turns into Bourbon.”
All of this geographic enlightenment could have been avoided by the use of a map.
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I walked out of the elevator of the parking garage and almost stepped on a woman’s fat wedding band. My mother could have done a much better job ascertaining the 4 Cs and value of this particular piece of jewelry, but my quick appraisal yielded a half-inch thick eighteen-carat gold band with a 1 carat, marquise-cut diamond – a well-worn yet solid piece that had taken on the character of some woman’s left ring finger. I walked the ring over to the garage office … where I was told to put it back on the grimy floor from which it came because the person who lost it may come back in search of it. “What if someone else finds and pockets it?” I protested. “Oh yeah,” replied the manager.
Me: “Why don’t you just keep it here? Someone may come along asking after it.”
Manager: “Where am I going to put it?”
Me: “I don’t know. Don’t you have a drawer or another safe spot?”
Manager: “I suppose so.”
Me: “Wonder how something as big as that ring could’ve slipped off a finger without someone noticing.”
Manager: “My guess is she didn’t have it on. It was something maybe she didn’t want her husband to know, you know?”
Me: “Errrrrr … bye.”
Damn! You have an interesting parking garage!
I’m not surprised the chiefs were lost.
Ugh. The parking garage thing is funny and sad. Funny that the manager wouldn’t take the ring and keep it as a lost and found item, with the idea that someone would come there to look for it. Sad that, instead, they would think the worst of the person who had lost the ring.
Do you think I should throw my keys away? I think I still have every key that was on my keychain before the storm. That might be a symbol for not letting go.
Liprap: I thought the same thing of that guy. Couldn’t a woman just have lost a ring? C’mon.
Cliff: I’d take the keys off my keychain, put them in a memento box that you actively associate with your past and then see how you feel. Sure, we all keep souvenirs for a reason, but there is a fine line between remembering and not being able to let go. Where are you on that line?
I have keys I can’t remember what they’re for. Should I throw them away?