Doug Clark: The case of the missing key

Misplace your wallet. Leave your coat in a restaurant. Can’t find where you put your (bleeping) sunglasses …

We’ve all been inside this straightjacket.

True, the little disappearances of life are not the end of the world. They’re not up there with murder, mayhem or misdemeanors.

But as Eddie Heinen discovered, a common misplaced item can drive a guy crazy.

Not that the North Idaho resident was driving anywhere. Not on March 12, anyway. That’s the day the key to his gunmetal gray 2011 Subaru Forester went missing.

The only key to the vehicle, admitted Eddie a bit sheepishly.

Everybody should have more than one key, of course. Eddie knows this now, so there’s no point rubbing it in.

The loss happened at a bad time, when the Heinens – Eddie, Melissa and their 4-year-old son, Matthew – were in the midst of moving from Hayden to an attractive cottage home near the Coeur d’Alene Golf Course.

That made sense. Eddie, 47, is a golf pro and sales rep for Yonex Golf and golfscoring.net.

Up to his eyebrows in packing boxes, Eddie needed to use his ride and, well, felt the absence.

“I live in my car. I put 35,000 to 40,000 miles on it a year,” Eddie told me the other day. “It’s a really reliable car, unless you lose the keys.”

Just like the search for Amelia Earhart, the quest for Eddie’s key began with the highest of expectations.

Boxes were opened. Pockets were purged. Nooks and crannies were peered into. Eddie pawed through the same smelly garbage not once, but two times.

“Wasn’t very pleasant,” he noted.

Eddie went through the psychological stages of loss at least twice, finally touching down on glum keyless acceptance.

Thinking it might be locked inside the Forester, Eddie summoned a locksmith who succeeded in opening the Subaru and setting off the alarm.

Nope. No key.

Unable to work without wheels, Eddie got rolling. He called for a tow truck to take his dead crossover to the dealer.

Then he called another tow truck when the first one couldn’t do the job. Apparently you need a special setup to tow vehicles with all-wheel drive like the Forester.

Finally at the dealership, Eddie was reinvigorated with renewed confidence. Which was quickly dashed worse than a triple bogey when he learned that getting a new key for a modern car was only slightly easier than solving the nation’s immigration problems.

(Have technological advancements really made life any easier? I don’t think so. For years, I drove around in a ’52 Buick that I could start with a screwdriver.)

Eddie’s new key had to be ordered from the Subaru factory, or maybe NASA. Finally, however, the key came (with a spare, of course) and his rig was back and running.

The ordeal only took eight days and 400 bucks.

“I thought I was losing my mind,” he observed.

Then there was the added cost in the guilt that hovered over Eddie like a rank fog. See, Eddie’s been down this road before.

“My wife always jokes that I’ve lost something in every country and state I’ve been to,” he confessed. “Clubs, shoes, clothes, gel, razors, phones, wallets …”

“Not a good habit of mine.”

He’s not kidding. Eddie once lost his wedding ring while shoveling snow.

“I was shoveling and playing in the snow with cold thin fingers and it fell off my hand,” he said. “I hired a metal detector guy to comb the yard and he never found it.”

Like the key, Eddie replaced the ring. Then summer arrived and he found the original “in our rock driveway when I was spraying for weeds.”

But wait, there’s more.

“I’ve left luggage on the curb in Vegas while loading the car. I’ve lost backpacks, tablets …”

There should be a support group for guys like Eddie. Then again, things are not always as they might seem.

On Easter Sunday, the key incident all but faded into a distant nightmare, Melissa heard a soft telltale jingle coming from young Matthew’s room.

You guessed it.

Matthew had found the key lurking in a positively brilliant hiding place: the battery compartment on his remote control truck.

The lad had apparently stuck it in there while playing and, well, forgot all about it.

Eddie wasn’t angry. Hey, with his history, how could he be?

Matthew’s “a good little boy,” he said. “And it made for a pretty funny story.”

No, it was a sense of relief that washed over this good-natured, trim athlete. Never finding the key “would have always haunted me.” Not to mention, “my wife would have never let me forget it.”