Let me give some background as to why it was more terrible than it would ordinarily be. There are a few times each year at work that are more insanely busy than usual - Parent/Teacher Conferences and Home Visits. We have lots of paper to get done before we can have them, and then there’s the actual scheduling and time to fit them all in.
So I show up to work one ordinary day (during home visit time) and notice one of the morning teachers’ cars isn’t in the parking lot. Weird because she NEVER misses work! Turns out she was sick and the afternoon teacher, Connie, who I work with was taking her place in the classroom. So I was given the chance to fill in for Connie’s scheduled visit and do my first home visit on my own that morning. No big deal. I thought I could handle that.
I drive the 15 minutes it takes to get the house in Hibbard, and I decide to leave my purse in the car since I already have papers and stuff to carry and wouldn’t need it anyway.
I go in and spend close to an hour doing the home visit. When I leave, my keys aren’t in my pocket, and the mom has already gone ahead to show me the way out. I pause, feel around in all of my pockets, and then turn back to check for them on the couch and around where I was sitting. There’s no sign of them so I follow her out to the door. Feeling totally unprofessional and a bit panicky, I tell her my keys aren’t in my pocket, but I’m sure they must be by my car or something. Maybe they fell out of my lap when I stood up.
I walk out to my car and don’t see them. All the cars doors are locked. What to do, what to do? I go back and tell her, and she helps me search around the couch for my keys. I check the path between the house and where I parked. Nothing. I look in all of my car windows to see if I can spot them. I could swear there’s no possible way I left them in the car. But really, where on earth could they be?
I don’t really want to go back in and admit that my keys must be locked in my car, but it’s the middle of February in Rexburg (so pretty much the dead of winter still) and I can’t just hang out by my car. I finally go back in and she says I can stay there until I figure something out. I text Joshua. He’s in class and doesn’t write back, but it’s not like he could do much for me anyway since I have the car. I try calling Rose, my manager. I’m not sure what I’ll tell her, but she doesn’t answer anyway. I try calling my co-worker, Lacey, the only other one who might answer her phone right now. Nope.
The lady whose house I’m at finds a wire coat hanger so we can try to break into my car. Neither of us know what we’re doing and obviously none of my car windows are cracked (remember it’s still the middle of winter). We quickly give up and go back inside.
She apologizes for not being able to drive me back to work. Her van is in the shop, and her husband has their other car at school. She would at least offer to take me back when she drops her daughter off for school, but she’ll be late since they have to wait for her husband to be done with class. I’m the teacher. I can’t be late for school.
I try calling Rose and Lacey again. Nothing. The mom has Rhonda, our cook’s, kitchen phone number so she tries calling her. She answers! Rhonda finds Rose and Rose says she’ll send Lacey over to pick me up after she’s done with the home visit that she’s on. (The house I'm at is essentially in the middle of nowhere…Lacey is the only other person who knows where it is since you can’t even google the address.)
In total I spend an hour after my home visit ended hanging out at this house. I spend the whole time feeling totally awkward and stupid.
Lacey calls me when she gets there, and as I go out I can see that Lacey’s laughing before I even get in her car. She tells me it happens to everybody, but I insist that it’s never happened to me before! I get back to work just in time for the afternoon class. Naturally everybody laughs at me. Connie thinks it would have been more worth our time for her to reschedule that home visit so I could have stayed and done paperwork. She’s absolutely right.
I leave both Joshua and Ryan, our friend who continually helps us out in times of need, messages on their phones. While I’m at work they talk and figure it out. Since Joshua has to stay at school for classes and tutoring, Ryan picks up Joshua’s keys and picks me up after work. He drives me forever out to the house where our car is, and waits to make sure I can get in.
Sure enough, I find my keys in our car! (Good thing because otherwise I’d have NO clue where they ended up!) Apparently I dropped my keys in my purse before getting out and before I decided at the last minute I had no need for my purse. Good one.
Let’s just say I won’t be making that same mistake anytime soon! I make sure my keys are on my person before locking that door and closing it.
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