I have a problem. 

A secret problem. 

See, I have an extra key on my key ring. 

I can hear you out there, you know. Asking what the big deal is about an extra key.  

First, I think we’re well established here. We all know I do not have superfluous keys on my key ring. I would never live that recklessly. 

Superfluous keys — what’s next? Throw away my five-year planner? Decide scuba diving isn’t deadly? Let the shower hair touch me? 

No. There are no superfluous keys on my key ring. 

But I have this key. A big, thick silver key the provenance of which I am uncertain. 

I suspect this key is for my in-laws’ house. I asked for a new one because I bent the old one while prying a security tag off a bathing suit. 

I didn’t steal the bathing suit. I know I didn’t steal it. Had I planned on stealing anything, I would have carefully documented the theft plans in my five-year planner.  

I used my in-laws’ house key as leverage to pry off the security tag. It was the key least difficult to replace, because my in-laws are among the least difficult people in my life. 

The key bent. 

I asked for another.  

I think. 

But here’s the thing when you have two parents with cognitive decline. 

Admitting you don’t know where a key on your key ring came from — well.  

That’s when people give you the look. 

And given our recent discussion on The Lost Boys, I am hesitant to say, out loud, how unsure I am about the origins of a key in my possession when I remember full conversations that never took place.  

Look at Willie, for example. Years ago, I realized Willie’s dementia had really taken flight when she handed me a letter and a boarding pass — both from 2001 — and a picture of Willie from around the same time. In it, Willie stands with a group of women in Universal Studios, Orlando. 

I knew instantly what I was looking at. Willie gave a lecture at a conference in Universal Studios that year.  

I know because I was there. 

It was an awful trip.  

The day before, I developed an infection from impacted wisdom teeth. I boarded the plane, feverish and in agony — despite the narcotics the dentist mercifully prescribed with the antibiotic. 

When Willie wasn’t in her lectures on that trip, she was following me around with various liquids, insisting I eat. Soup and smoothies and bottled Starbucks Frappuccinos. 

I couldn’t get any of it down — the pain was that bad. And I knew, when the antibiotics kicked in a day or so down the road, I’d be able to eat. 

But I couldn’t say any of this to Willie because I couldn’t talk.  

I’d vehemently shake my head “no.” I’d write “PAIN!” on the hotel stationery in our shared hotel room. I’d point to the drool perpetually leaking from my mouth. If I couldn’t swallow my own saliva, how could I swallow anything else? 

Willie — well, Willie never met a “no” she didn’t fight. Our hotel fridge overflowed with congealed mushroom soup. Willie sat vigil for my imminent death from starvation as I curled up on my saliva-soaked pillow, hoping for the narcotics to dull more than my physical pain. 

So, yeah. I was very familiar with the letter, boarding pass, and picture. 

I probably took the picture, drool oozing from my mouth. 

When Willie showed me the picture and told me it was her friends from her 1960s workplace, I knew she was about as wrong as people who think Gavin MacLeod should be the only Highlander. 

“And that one right there,” Willie said, tapping a finger on a woman in the group, “was a snot. So obnoxious.” 

Well, that part might be true. 

So each time I look at the key, I think about that trip to Orlando and that picture and Willie thinking it was 60 years old instead of 20 years old. 

And I don’t want to ask anyone where the key came from. 

I mean, yes. I’ll share my confusion with you guys. 

Hey — do you guys know where the key came from? 

No? 

Oh, do you have two parents with cognitive decline, too? 

I suppose I could try the key on my in-laws’ door. That’s cool. I can be the weird daughter-in-law fiddling with the in-laws’ doorknob.  

Which situation is less weird? Trying the key while my in-laws are home? Or trying while my in-laws are out? What if I think they’re both out, but one is home, and they catch me? What then? 

OK. Not a good idea. 

So I exist with this quandary — a key I can’t use, can’t throw away, and can’t ask anyone about.  

And having an extra key on my key ring eats at my obsessive regimentation. This is a rule violation, this wayward key.  

Huh. 

Maybe I should just, um, forget about it.