Ladies and gentlemen, a story.

I’m not a fan of purses. They’re cumbersome and uncomfortable and a magnet for things I don’t even really need. I use them for the practical reason of they hold my wallet, and my phone on days when I’m not wearing jeans (which is like…twice a month on a good month). But since I walk to the store from home here, I’ve gotten into the habit of wearing my hooded sweatshirts in lieu of my peacoats so I can stick my wallet and any other accouterments in the big front pocket. I needed to go down to Wilko today for some householdy goods, so I loaded up with my wallet, my phone, my iPod, and my keys, and set out on my way.

It’s a beautiful day in Headingley, cold, but not rainy, clear, crisp, and blue. With my iPod blissfully filling my ears with the sweet sounds of Satriani, Sublime, and Santana, I made my way down to Wilko without issue and stopped off at the Superdrug afterwards to treat myself to a bottle of my favorite perfume (Obsession, by Calvin Klein, btw. Just for future reference). I made my way back home, wallet lighter, hands fuller, head clearer, when it occurred to me once I got to the neighborhood to check my big pocket for my keys.

They weren’t there.

I dug around in that pocket in a panic, with a modicum of conscious acceptance right away that my keys weren’t there, and there was no use in fretting, but now I had to come up with a solution. My landlord would charge me 25 pounds for a new set of keys, since they’re an unusual make and I have four of them. My flatmates upstairs would have to let me inside since Sara is at work. I left the door to the flat itself unlocked as if I had made some sort of unconscious effort to abate the more detrimental effects of my future blunder. I knew going back to look for the keys would likely be fruitless, since the area was busy. I’d only just resigned myself to the inevitable headache of all of this when something else occurs to me.

How stupid would you have to be to keep your keys in that pocket? Along with your wallet and phone, no less, two things you’d have to extract more than once. That’s just asking for it. Could I have been that dumb??

The answer was no. Keys were in my back pocket. Duh.

The moral of the story, my friends, is that I am not always an idiot. Only sometimes.