Keyless Keys of Today

 

I have known a few people over life who worked where they carried keys, many keys. Keys in numbers that required big key rings. Some even used 3 inch carabiners because there were so many keys to keep track of. When I worked at a school many years ago the janitor jingled down the hallways with keys on his belt. Oh so many keys. Not being one who ever wore a belt I often wondered how he kept his pants up while wearing twelve pounds of keys on his left side. Let alone how he kept standing up straight. That was then. Now we are entering into a keyless world. I am slowly unlocking the secrets of the keyless world. But! Yes a keyed up “but.” What shall I do with all those key chains I have been given and bought and then stuffed in fibber drawers and various places that over the years have somehow made their way into my world?

Seriously. I have keys and keychains in an old wrinkly holey baggie laying on a shelf in the cupboard above my washer and dryer that is a walk down a forty year plus memory lane journey. There are keys on rings in that bag from the locks on the doors of the Eureka County Airport hanger when the hanger was a wooden building in the 1960’s.  That original building is now replaced by a huge fancy hanger. But those keys lay claim to when the airport was even used by the highway department crew when they used the first runway as a place to mix asphalt with a road grader and a Michigan front end loader that my husband ran. Life, keys and keyrings and I go back a long way.

Now comes a time of keyless locks and entries. The first time I ran into no key needed was when my friend asked me to move her truck and she handed me what looked like a clicker for a car door but there was no key. I looked at her like she was from another planet. She informed me that I was to just insert that plastic thing into the steering column as “it” was the key. She was right of course because it was after all her truck. So I took the clicker/key all in one thing and was thrust into the keyless world.

The next eye opener into the new keyless world came when I was checking into a newer hotel. The plastic keycard looked like the hundreds I have gotten at front desks before. When I got to the door though there was no slot on the lock to slip the card into, hear that click, see the green light come on prompting me to turn the handle and pop into the rented room. Then as always, checking to see there was nobody hiding in the closet first. Oops unlocked unnecessary information there. That keycard had tiny pictures printed on it. I of course had to get out my glasses to decipher the hieroglyphics.  They indicated I just needed to hold the plastic up to the lock and voila the lock clicked and the room---and the empty closet were mine. I have since learned that doors can also be unlocked with your phone. Not my phone as I do not have a, “do it all up to date fancy I phone.” Yet.

My first adventure into a door lock that had a keypad needing a code was at our local ambulance bay. We owned a hardware store and also sold welding gases and oxygen for medical applications. In that capacity I delivered big heavy green O2 tanks for use on the ambulances and to the clinic. The new door locks worked well after I called to get the code. I could tell you the code but then as it has been said, “I’d have to kill ya!” HAHA

Now the newest keyless miracles are automobiles that need no key at all. A button and a push, as long as the tiny plastic computer chip is somewhere nearby in a pocket or a purse, and varoom away you go. I still haven’t come to grips with new vehicles no longer having CD players. Now I have to not only figure out what to do with bags of old keys and mountains of really cool keyrings, I have to find a new use for used CDs!

I sometimes long to go back and collect my skate key that unlocked the key to my heart for the little boy down the street. Oh so, so many keys ago.

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Trina lives in Eureka, Nevada. Her funny books are available anywhere you buy books or email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com to buy signed copies.

Really!