There are phases people may find themselves going through when it comes to keys. The first is yearning for the day when you have keys. Then comes frustration when you're not ready for them (so they say). Then you get THE KEYS and your life IS CHANGED. For about a minute and a half. Then they tell you how much it costs if they have to rekey all the doors because you lost your copy. Shortly after getting the keys in your possession comes the subconscious
phase of wanting to let everyone know, you have THE KEYS. This period may introduce itself in any number of ways, but it usually involves something like wearing the keys on a
carabiner hooked to your belt loop. As you walk through the theater and the backstage hallways, your keys CLANG and JINGLE together -- alerting everyone you've entered into their proximity and that you must be IMPORTANT because, AFTER ALL, you have THE KEYS.
After a few months or year, you grow out of this
phase and no longer insist on your keys being so readily accessible as to dangle from your belt loops. In fact, resentment begins to
build. THE KEYS bring you pain and confusion. Somebody doesn't close a door fully until it latches and something goes missing. YOU THERE -- with THE KEYS --
Why didn't YOU lock THE DOOR with THE KEYS -- YOUR KEYS?! (After all, it's your fault for not checking all thirty-three doors had been locked and latched shut the night before when it was 2AM and after a 19-hour day just wanted to collapse into the cushy wonder and amazement that is your bed. Or even your couch. OK, at this
point, you'd have settled for as much as a carpeted floor to take a
nap on before you had to be up again in 5 hours.).
Let us not forget the unending irritation of when other people know YOU have THE KEYS, and other people miss no opportunity to ask YOU to open THE DOORS. Enough time and irritation passes until one day you reconcile your sense of duty and dilligence with your apathy toward THE KEYS, and suddenly you find yourself just whoring out your keys to anyone who will take them so you don't have to go open the doors for other people every fifteen minutes (and it's almost never just one door they want opened, and the second door they want opened is always on the other side of the building.).
We also mustn't forget about THE ALARM. Now that you have THE KEYS, you also may have THE CODE that arms and disarms the building's security
system. THE CODE seems like a blessing at first. Then one night you try to leave and you can't because THE CODE doesn't work. Somewhere, a cryptically labeled door you now know as "SW DR A15R" is either open or has a faulty sensor and you cannot leave until you find your mysterious "SW DR A15R" and show it who's boss. Naturally, you begin by going to the southwest corner of the building and find nothing. Out of screaming desperation, you begin pushing doors open and closing them again. You walk back across the building to control panel for THE ALARM, and find THE CODE still refuses to work. You begin walking around the building and opening and closing all the doors until stupid luck leads you to the offending faulty sensor and closing the door a second time resolves the error code.
GLEE! With THE CODE entered into THE ALARM, you can shut off the lights and be on your merry way! Happy day! Except that by now, it's 3:30AM and you've just about had it. Also, your car is out of gas. When you closed down the theater, you hopped in your car and drove around to the end of the building where THE ALARM resides and left your car running because you were only going to step in for a minute to sign out and arm the
system. When you began searching for "SW DR A15R", you knew your car was running but figured it would only take you 10min tops to get that problem solved. In your exhausted stupor, 10min turned into an hour and your car was already low on gas because you haven't had a waking moment in the last week to so much as
swing by a gas station. Moments before you're about to collapse to the
ground beside your stalled car, you begin laughingly maniacally. In that kind of way you laugh only when you imagine how much fun everyone's going to have at your expense when they find out why your car is stalled in front of the main offices and that you slept in the theater last night under the
desk for the lighting
console.
Soon thereafter in a fit of rage and unabated willfull negligence, you toss THE KEYS into THE RIVER and begin chanting over and over "I DON'T HAVE THE KEYS FOR THAT SORRY" while giggling until your friend slaps you and you flip back into reality. The end.
.
