What Is It About Keys?

No one ever needs to give me a key to the kingdom. I've got so many keys I'm certain one of my own would open the door. My particular problem with keys is that I can never remember if the keys I carry with me still open doors I currently use. So my key chain keeps acquiring more and more keys until I take some off and put them in 'that kitchen drawer' to see what happens. Generally nothing happens because those keys were to locks long ago changed or to offices where I no longer work or to cabinets donated to charity years before. And still I have the keys in the drawer. And then I open the drawer and marvel at the number of keys accumulating there -- keys bereft, apparently, of locks into which they once fit. It's a sad situation. Not necessarily for me. I can still manage both my life and my excess keys but sad for the keys. Feeling disconnected and cut off and, yes, purposeless is not an enviable situation. Possibly few worry about the well being of keys, however, but it is interesting to consider the things we or in this case I have difficulty tossing. Perhaps to me a key represents the possibility of entrance and to put that key in the garbage represents a loss of possibility. Either that or I'm riddled by indecision. Or perhaps I just like keys. Years ago I found an old key ring out in the Arizona desert of my childhood. It was so coated in mud and dirt that at first it almost looked like just another rock. I chipped away at the desert detritus until I got to the actual ring. On the ring were two or three keys and then a medallion bearing the words -- If found please return to George P. Hunt, Governor, the State of Arizona. For years I carried that key ring with me always intending one day to return it to at least the office of the governor. And then I lost it. Keys get us into places and they get us out of places. Jailers have keys. Prisoners do not. The housed have keys to their homes. The homeless do not. A key can be a powerful fact, an essential tool, and a compelling symbol. I'm still not certain, though, if I really need a drawer of keys to forgotten locks. And not one of those keys bears my name with a request to return the key to me. And if it did and someone actually did, I still wouldn't remember the lock into which the key fit.