MY FIGHT WITH KEYS

more participants at Jenny Matlock's Alphabet Thursday

Keys are my enemies ! They make me loose time, because I am always looking for them. Of course I always put them on the same place, the trouble is, the places change, not the key ! You wouldn't think that you can loose a car key when you are in your garage you had switched off the engine and climbed out of the car. But the next time I wanted to take my car they had disappeared. Usually I always put them besides my seat, there is a little place to put small things. Of course no keys there.

After having looked under the seats and everywhere in the car, I finally took my spare keys. When I came home I emptied my purse, turned it upside down, shook it, but besides some crumbs nothing fell out. A week went by, without finding the key, which must be somewhere in the house, but where ? One day I found it in my purse in a little side pocket closed with a zip ! Of course it couldn't fall out.

And this is only one example of uncountable key searches in my life.
  

Neighbor keys, kitchen door and entrance keys

Despite my key "wars" we keep the keys of our next neighbor's, 4 houses in total. I am not alone, because they too, forget their keys and then come over to pick up the spare keys. It often happens with the 17 year old son, who leaves them inside or looses them, and Dominique is a champion in key forgetting too.
So I am not the only one.

Now I wanted to know who had invented the key which causes me so much troubles ! And I found out that the first key and lock were made out of wood some 4,000 years ago;  !! That means for 4000 years people were loosing their keys !  However it is unclear which civilization was the first to invent them. Probably they want to stay anonymous !

The first all-metal lock appeared between the years 870 and 900, and are attributed to the English craftsmen. It is also said that the key was invented by Theodore of Samos in the 6th century BC. I wished that Theodore had never been born !

In Ancient Rome, having keys—or anything worth locking up—was uncommon. So the key was as much a status symbol as a security device. Affluent Romans often kept their valuables in secure boxes within their households, and wore the keys as rings on their fingers. The practice had two benefits: It kept the key handy at all times, while signaling that the wearer was wealthy and important enough to have money and jewelry worth securing. A pity that times have changed. Now you have to lock your house like a door in Fort Knox. I never thought that a key could be a social status symbol ! These Romans !