I can’t be the only person out there with 1,278 keys.

Okay, I’m exaggerating, but at least a dozen keys jangling on my ring are a mystery to me. Surely they unlock something, but what? And where?

My keys drive Widdle crazy. “Who has that many keys?” he says. I do, that’s who. Me, the Queen of Keys.

After pondering my cache for a while, it’s clear that several are spare house keys. At one time I apparently made an attempt to establish order by color-coding them with nail polish (Revlon’s Rubies in the Snow) or Magic Marker (Day-Glo Yellow). But the last vestiges of polish/marker have worn off and now I don’t know if I have equal access to Mama’s old house, the river house, my mother-in-law’s house, The Love Shack (where Widdle and I live), or the condo that I rent out.

Surely I don’t still have keys to the house I sold nine years ago, but we can’t rule that out.  In fact, another key looks like it might unlock the garage of that very same house.

A couple of the mystery keys look like they go to padlocks, but I can’t think of a single thing I keep secured with a padlock. There are three car keys. I own one car. One key, which is battered with traces of rust, looks like it would fit my ex-husband’s Chevy F-150 truck. That would be bizarre, considering the last time I saw that truck’s tail-lights was in June 1998.

There are two mailbox keys. I do not have a P.O. box. One could be for my MIL’s P.O. box, and the other perhaps my husband’s. But when were these keys put on my ring? While I slept?

I was discussing all this with the dog last week when it occurred to me it might be time for her annual inoculations. We keep her veterinary records in a locked strongbox. (My will, in comparison, is kept in a cheap metal filing cabinet with a label on the outside that says “WILL IN HERE.” Priorities…)

There is no strongbox key on my ring. I know because I tried all of them. That particular key was eventually located in the junk drawer, about an hour after I began foaming at the mouth and cursing locks in general and keys in particular.

I believe two of the keys unlock the aforementioned flimsy filing cabinet, as if one swift jerk doesn’t bring the drawers screeching open.

 A smaller, skeleton-type key looks like it would open a can of Hormel corned beef. (Yes, Virginia, once upon a time you had to peel metal away from meat.) Since I have never eaten corned beef, I’m betting it’s a skate key. Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, roller skates were pieces of flat metal with four wheels attached. You clamped them onto the soles of your shoes, tightened them with a skate key, swooped off down the block and slammed into Old Man Johnson’s Nash Rambler because the brakes on those things were non-existent. The skates, not the Rambler.

None of which explains why I would still have a skate key. Or what looks exactly like a diary key, when I haven’t kept a diary since 9th grade.

I think I’ll just put all these mysterious chunks of metal in a safe place for now. You know, under lock and key.

Julie R. Smith, who has some shoes she’s not sure about either, can be reached at widdleswife@aol.com.

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