Everybody Knows That, Phyllis!

“Everybody knows That, Phyllis!” Well actually “everybody” doesn’t, but somebody does and that’s what I needed. It was a genius plan at 5 a.m. that rainy morning when I drove through a record setting downpour to the airport: the evening before I’d biked over to a friend’s with my extra key so she could pick up my car and drive it back home. My flight over Lake Michigan was delayed by a lightning storm and then we were off. Little did I know until later how “off” my perfect plan was!

It turns out you can’t lock your car with your remote key and expect the extra key to open it. I didn’t know that, obviously; did you? The person I was with at lunch when I got the call looked at me in shock. “Everybody knows that, Phyllis!” he volunteered. In fact, I learned that not only does the extra key not work, but it sets off the alarm, which then has to wear down, at which point the extra key still won’t work because the car’s in theft mode. Six hundred miles away on a Saturday, I was up a creek! Finally on Monday I learned from the car dealer that I’d have to mail the key… yada yada yada.

From my August e-newsletter “Little Think,” you may know I’m a firstborn with a component part to prove I’m right. It’s annoying and I fight it, but in this case I did ask my engineer and my senior producer at the studio if they knew about the key deal… and they didn’t! Neither did six others I asked. I won’t tell the person who doubled my guilt about this -- I’m not that much of a firstborn -- but it did ease my angst a bit!

Now this story could go on. I hope it doesn’t, but the thing is that the key should have arrived at another friend’s office in the little coastal town where the airport is located, and I have not heard from her yet. Did the key make it to her? I can only imagine the car being towed, or the battery being dead after warning of theft until the alarm wore down. I already owe the first friend who drove with her kids 30 minutes each way to the airport to come up with no car to drive back. Now I’ll owe another friend for receiving the key in an envelope. My lunch advisor would be saying right now, “Everybody knows that, Phyllis!” and he’d be right!

I’m just hoping and praying the key isn’t lost in the mail because it’s the only one of its kind. This car is 13-years-old with 94,000 miles on it, and it works great as my summer metal Clydesdale. But without the master key, that thing will become a monument right in front of the Greater Blacker Manistee Airport forever. Then I’d owe two friends, their husbands and their kids who came along to drive the other car back, plus the airport folks who have to stare at the car stuck outside their workplace. I’m thinking either homemade hot fudge sauce or black raspberry jelly. What would you do?

Stay tuned for the rest of the story, and please be forgiving of people who insist that “everybody knows that!” God knows I hardly know anything. He’s the only one who really knows everything, including where that key is and how this will turn out. The Bible tells me there’s nowhere I can go to hide from God, not to the depths of the sea or the ends of the earth. Unfortunately, it doesn’t say much about misplaced keys. But then it is the key to receiving His plans for me for good and not for evil. So however this story ends, it’ll all work out. I can count on Him for that. That’s what I need. And when nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen…I know where to go! How nice it would be if everybody knew that!