Jesus I am not.

This morning, I was having a nice time eating my oatmeal and listening to Bill Bryson talk about London in the 1500s, when I decided I should go get some groceries. I went to get my keys, only to find out that, yes, they were missing. Completely.

The first thing that went through my mind was "Don't panic." And I think I did a pretty good job with that, I looked in all of my pockets and my purse, everywhere I could think of. But I came to the awful conclusion that I must have dropped them sometime last night after coming home from "The Fest," some German-esque pub near Parsons Green in Zone 2. I know I had them on the way to the station, because I dropped my Oyster Card and panicked when that wasn't in my pocket (my friend Kevin had picked it up, luckily), so I remember feeling my keychain in there.

Kelly and Caitlin came home about a minute after I realized they were missing, and Kelly went on a walk with me to try to find them on our twisted journey home (we went through a bunch of side streets, as per Rachel's directions). No luck. As we were doing this, I came to a realization: they probably fell out of my pocket when I was sprinting down High Street Kensington in order to catch the bus that would take us home. So the only thing left to do was go there and retrace my steps, from the McDonald's where I started to run from to the bus stop.

I get there, go out, and I must have looked like a crazy person, examining the sidewalk like I was. I went into every store in the stretch between Mickey D's and the stop, asking if anyone turned in some keys, but no luck there either. At the McDonald's, the girl behind the counter didn't speak English, and when I asked her, her response was a really confused look coupled with the puzzled question, "Cheese?" No, not cheese. KEYS. To open a door.

I went outside, and saw a street sweeper. I thought maybe they'd have some policy that if they found something like keys or whatever they'd put them someplace, so I went up to him and asked him. And of course, HE didn't speak English either. Aren't I in England? I thought so, but I guess that doesn't mean anything. When I finally got through to him what I was asking, after a lot of pantomiming and using different words, he finally thought he understood and proceeded to tell me where I could get keys copied and where I could get new ones. I thanked him and walked away.

I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be successful. Finding a set of keys on High Street Kensington in the middle of the day more than 12 hours after they were lost is pretty much on par with Jesus walking on water. It's not going to happen for me.

In the tube station, I told one of the guys working what my predicament was and asked what to do, all the while hoping he spoke English. And when he responded, not only did he understand me, he sounded like he was from America or Canada. So that was a nice change. He brought me to the control room and the guys there gave me a number to call for inquiries about lost property, but I have to wait until tomorrow. At least there is still a ray of hope, but I don't know if that will lead to anything. I'll probably just end up making copies of one of my flatmates set of keys. It's not like my old ones had our address on them. I just lost two really cool keychains.