I found the "keys" to happiness

And they weren't where I expected them to be

I was shivering. Dripping wet in my bathing suit.  It was raining. And, I had to pee.   

Just five minutes earlier, I was enjoying a leisurely soak in the therapeutic natural hot springs at Strawberry Park in Steamboat Springs, Colorado.  

Then. Boom.  

A sudden late summer lightning storm bellowed in the sky.  

It had been a wonderful day with my beloved, his sister, and his daughter. We were on Day Three of our adventure in the Colorado Rockies.  My body had that encouraging ache of doing just a little too much exercise. Hiking, biking, and playing in the bright mountain sun.

We weren’t bothered by the sudden storm. Our fingers were wrinkled already, and it was time to get out.   As we dried off in the makeshift shelter, we talked about our plans for dinner.  A hearty repast of chicken, rice, salad, and of course a few bottles of Rose.

Everything was going great.  We might get a little wet running to the car, but we certainly weren’t going to melt.

All I needed to do was pull the car keys out of my bag. 

Key duty.  It was the only responsibility any of us had on vacation and no one wanted it.  

The day before my beloved had pulled the “short key” and bore the burden of the responsibility. He had a momentary scare when we got back to the car from our hike.  After a few frantic moments, he remembered where they were. 

Today I was the unlucky soul.  I was determined that we weren’t going to have any more key drama. I was very deliberate about where I was going to put the keys. 

I placed them in a special bag that I had borrowed from my beloved’s daughter. The bag had traveled the world with her and while it had beautiful stitching on the outside,  the inside had seen better days. While the pocket lining was torn,  I knew the keys would still be safe at the bottom of the bag.

Dig. Poke. Dig.  

Rummage. Shake. Rummage.

Nothing. Zero. Zilch.

“What the <insert explative>?”  I couldn’t breathe. The keys were nowhere to be found. It felt like I had been punched in the stomach. I had been trusted with the car keys and I failed.

Frantic, I started pulling my underclothes out of the bag with abandon which was ironic considering two hours earlier I had carefully folded and hidden them from public view.  Now in my manic rush to find the keys, I was throwing my intimates out like popcorn for everyone to see. 

We were miles away from civilization.  Soaking wet.   The worst part?  Our phones were locked in the car.  How were we going to get back?

“You are the dumbest person of all of the dumbest people on the planet”  I kept shouting to myself as my brain went to all of the terrible, horrible things that were going to happen to us.

“Would we be eaten by a bear?”

“Would we starve to death?”

“Would we almost starve to death and then be eaten by a bear?”

However it was going to happen, one thing I knew for certain, we were all going to meet our demise. 

And it was all my fault. 

I kept shaking the bag, hoping that the keys would magically come tumbling out. 

While I was paralyzed in fight or flight mode,  my beloved’s sister casually pointed to a pair of shorts.  “Could the keys be in there?” she asked hopefully.

I shook her away.  Of course not. They had to be in the bag.  I kept shaking, digging, and hoping that the keys would miraculously appear.

My beloved and his daughter had already started moving toward the car.  They didn’t know about our impending doom.  

“I can’t find the keys.  We are all going to die.” 

They looked at me in horror, disgust, and disappointment.   I had failed them.  I had ruined our day. Our lives were over.

But then, a miracle happened.

God was on my side. All of those times that I held the door for elderly couples at the mall, let pedestrians take their time at the crosswalk and returned the empty shopping carts to the entrance of the grocery store, all of my good deeds had paid off. 

It stopped raining and the sun snuck out from behind the clouds. And, wait for it…..there was something sparkling in my beloved’s sister’s hand.

It was the car keys.

Yup, they were in the shorts she had pointed to earlier.  We would live to see another day. We weren’t going to be eaten by bears on the mountain

My sense of relief was totally out of proportion.  My behavior had been ridiculous.  I was so fixated on one solution, that I missed the other one entirely.   

Have you ever felt that kind of immobilizing panic?  

When you are unable to have a rational thought? 

You blow things out of proportion and lose sight of what is important.

If I had taken a breath and not let my emotions run wild, I would have remembered that at the last minute, I had put the keys in my shorts pocket because I wasn’t entirely convinced that the travel-worn bag was up for the job.

The lesson here is panic is a reflex.

It’s meant to protect you from danger.  In this situation, however, I was not in danger.  We were not going to die.  We would find a way to get down the mountain and my momentary mess-up would be a memory we would share forever.

As humans, we have the capacity to influence and direct our thoughts. Looking back, I should have stopped, taken a moment, and then gained control of the rational side of my brain.   Hopefully, I have learned something for the next time.

Now, on to the end of the story. 

As we walked together up to the parking area, the group lovingly had their fun throwing snide jibs and jabs at me. Through it all, I kept a steady stare down at the keys in my hands.

Then all of a sudden, they stopped talking.

g. I looked up to see what caused their silence.   

Smack dab in front of us was a  gleaming white van with a message in big black letters on the side.

“Free transportation down the mountain”