Revenge of the Missing Keys

This morning my wife greeted me with a cup of coffee and a question.

"Guess what dad found this morning?"

Let's see, what's the only thing my father's been looking for these days? What's the only thing he's been blaming everybody but himself for misplacing? What's the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?*

*"What do you mean? An African or European swallow?"

"What? I don't know that!"

Bo-iiing!

"Auuuuuugh!"

"The keys the baby stole?" I ventured a guess, taking a sip of my coffee. And then I took another one.

Ouch, it was hot... but it kept me from laughing out loud. I knew the baby didn't take it. My wife knew the baby didn't take it. The only person who didn't seem to know it was my father. According to him, his two year-old great-grandson snatched them out of his hand, stole his car, and maxed out his credit cards playing blackjack in Vegas. 

Of course, I'm joking.

It was poker.

"Where did he find them?" I asked.

We took our coffee cups and went out to sit in our patio and enjoy the morning. I took my usual spot. My wife took hers.

"When he got dressed this morning to go on his walk," she said, "he decided to wear his black sports pants." 

Black pants? 

It's hot outside! 

Too hot to be walking around in black pants. 

"And there they were," she continued. "They were in his pants' pocket all this time."

We shook our heads, and laughed to ourselves. And then we talked about other things. We talked about current events. We talked about pop culture. We talked about the last time we were in the house alone together for any length of time.

And that's when my father decided to show up. 

He has that kind of timing.

"What are you guys talking about? he asked as he sat down with us.

Getting old is strange. My father can't hear what we're saying when we're talking to him from only a few feet away, but somehow he hears everything we don't want him to hear.

He can be in the den watching a baseball game on our TV, we can be in the kitchen with the kitchen TV set on, I can have my back to him, and if I whisper to my wife, "Do you want to go see that new Christopher Nolan movie?", my father will yell, "The one about those Greeks?" from where he's sitting.

On the other hand, I'll be sitting right next to him and I'll ask him, "Where's the remote?"

"The what?"

"The remote to the TV."

"The what to the TV?"

"The remote."

"To the TV?"

"Yeah."

"Why would I know where the remote is?"

It drives me nuts. 

And on those rare conversations that he doesn't quite catch what we're saying, he'll just ask us afterward what we were talking about. First he'll ask my wife, then he'll ask me, and then he'll compare our stories to see if we're lying to him. It's gotten to the point that I'll wait until we're upstairs alone, before I'll tell my wife anything or ask her anything. I'd wait until he goes into his room, but that would mean a long wait. A very long wait.

Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

"Are you guys ready for breakfast?" my wife asks us, getting up.

"Sure, sweetie," I tell her. "Need help?"

"I'm fine," she says. "Finish your coffee."

"Not too much for me," my father tells her. "You always serve me too much."

"Okay, dad," my wife tells him, and goes off into the direction of the kitchen. "I won't."

We sit there for a while. Me, taking a sip or two of my coffee. My father, wiping the sweat from his forehead. 

I told you it was hot.

"I heard you found your keys," I tell him. 

He shakes his head, and laughs.

"Yeah," he laughs. "I found them."

I wait. 

He doesn't elaborate.

"Where did you find them?"

"What?"

"Where did you find them?"

"Find what?"

"Your keys. Where did you find them?"

"Where did I find my keys?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, yeah--hee hee--they were in my pants."

"In your pants?"

"Yeah, in my pants. I must have forgotten them."

"So the baby didn't take them from you?"

"Who?"

"The baby. The baby didn't take them from you?"

"Why would the baby take my keys?"

"But, didn't you say..."

"Say what?"

"...that the baby took your keys?"

"Why would I say that?"

My father laughed, shook his head, and looked at me as if I was an idiot.

"How could a baby take my keys from me?" he asked. "I'm a grown man and he's just a baby."

He was right. That was MY point all along.

My wife stuck her head through the door.

"Breakfast is ready," she said, smiling, knowing what we're probably talking about. I must get a particular kind of look on my face when my father has me flustered.

"Get this," he tells my wife, nodding toward me. "He thinks the baby took my keys." My father turns back to me, and makes a kind of snorting sound. "How could a baby take my keys?"

We get up, and walk into the kitchen.

"Wait a minute," he asks, all of a sudden suspicious, "how did you know I found my keys?"