“I mean, it could be that God stopped the bullets, or He changed Coke to Pepsi, He found my fucking car keys”

Four years ago I lost my car keys. At the time we were in the middle of a move from Cincinnati to Lexington, and for a while I simply assumed that they would turn up in some box or another. As the years went by, and we underwent another move, that hope faded. Late last year, I finally threw away two bike locks that I had kept around in the forlorn hope that the keys would turn up. One of the keys on the ring was a departmental submaster, which set off a minor crisis at work that eventually made it all the way to the Dean (I still have the panicked e-mails from the Dean, insisting that we needed to change every lock on the floor twice, one temporary, one permanent, and I remember my Director carefully talking the Dean down). The ring also had my old lanyard from the year I spent as an RA in the University of Oregon dorm system.

And then I get a call last Tuesday from someone, telling me that my keys had been turned in at a Cincinnati area Kroger, and that they had identified me through the Kroger card on the chain. I was driving at the time, and I insisted that they had to be wrong; the keys were literally in the car. But then I realized that they had found the *old* set. It’s fair to say that my surprise was noticeable to the person on the phone. After confirming my identity, she took my new address, and they express mailed the keys to me. Some thoughts, in no particular order:

• Where could the keys have been that they spent four years in a Kroger?
• Who knew there was an upside to giving your actual phone number on your Kroger card?
• Does this mean that I should never throw anything away again?
• Isn’t that some damn fine customer service?
• Does this count as one of my miracles?