Car Keys Or Underwear? (satire)

[Joe Fields]

So I was looking around the house for my misplaced freedoms the other day. (This happens a lot with my car keys. But it’s the funniest thing – they are always in the last place I look. This also happens sometimes with my socks and underwear, but for some strange reason I almost never find them. Once an odd sock or a pair of underwear come up missing, I never see them again. It’s a good thing I don’t get emotionally attatched to socks and underwear.)

Anyway, so there I was looking for some of my missing freedoms and wondering if they were going to wind up like my car keys, which I always end up finding, or my underwear, which get lost in some as yet unexplained black hole. Hmmmm…. Car keys or underwear. This was really beginning to perturb me because, unlike my socks and underwear, I do, from time to time get emotionally attatched to my freedoms. (One freedom I could do without has to do with eating liver and onions.)

I looked in all the usual places – under the cushion of my chair, but all I found was 27 cents and a handful of popcorn. I ate the popcorn and continued my search. But subsequent investigations of my bedroom, the closets and kitchen cabinets met with the same disappointing results. Now it was time to call in the cavalry. With the enlisted help of my wife and son, we renewed the search for my freedoms in earnest. I should have known better. Like all other group searches we ended up wandering around following each other, as if we were the ones that were lost. Again no luck.

Desperate, I turned to my last hope – my dog, Gypsy. “Girl,” I pleaded. “Do you have any idea where my freedoms are? I really need them.”

Sensing the seriousness of the situation my faithful dog promptly led me to the back door and barked. With my hopes raised, we went into the back yard where Gypsy made a beeline for – you guessed it – a half-buried pair of my underwear. ( Could it be she was trying to tell me something? )

My dog, tail wagging and grinning from ear was very pleased with herself, knowing she had done her part to help out. I patted her head and thanked her. I can always use another pair of underwear.

Disgusted, I kicked at a rock laying just outside of my rock garden. Now usually when I kick at a rock I miss and fall down in a contorted heap. But as luck would have it I hit this one squarely. It was a thing of beauty, reminiscent of a football sailing fifty yards in slow motion and gliding perfectly through the uprights. It only took a second for reality to set in however, as I watched in horror my rock shatter my next door neighbor’s window. Dutifully, I marched myself over there and offered him some duct tape and plastic sheeting, which I had a large supply of. He was not amused.

Feeling pretty sheepish at this point, I slowly walked back into the house. Slumping into my living room chair, and about ready to give up for the day, I got help from a most unexpected source. There on T.V. was the president of the United States, George W. Bush telling me that our soldiers were in Iraq fighting for my freedoms.

“Hot diggity dog,” I yelled out with excitement. “So that’s where my freedoms are at.”

“But I thought they were looking for weapons of mass destruction,” said my wife.

“Never mind all that, honey. It’s my freedoms I’m worried about.”

Yet, the more I got to thinking, the more puzzled I became. What were my freedoms doing in Iraq? I could not recall ever having an Iraqi over for dinner and loaning my freedoms to him, which by the way, had it been my brother I would have played heck ever getting them returned to me. In fact, I had not even seen any Iraqis jogging in our neighborhood. I was positive that no Iraqi had broken into my house and stolen them. And after thinking long and hard I was reasonably sure that I had never been to Iraq. Besides, had I ever gone to Baghdad and accidentally left my freedoms in my hotel room under my bed, I know the maid would have turned them in and I would have gotten them back. No doubt about that.

Still, I couldn’t figure out how my freedoms ended up in Iraq. But, according to the president that’s where they were. Being a man of action, I was determined to take matters into my own hands. I called up the airlines and asked when I could book the next flight to Iraq. The ticket agent, in a rather rude manner abruptly informed me that his airline didn’t fly to Iraq, never did fly to Iraq and never will fly to Iraq. Then he proceeded to ask me a whole lot of questions. Being the polite person that I am, I related my story to him.

Now it couldn’t have been more than fifteen minutes after I had hung up the phone, when I heard a knock on the door. It was two men in identical suits, both wearing sunglasses. I guess they must have been airline employees, but I couldn’t figure out how the two had arrived so quickly, when the airport was forty miles away. They asked a lot of strange questions, then did a really thorough search of my house.

The two men finally left, taking my computer hard drive with them. Now that was the one place I hadn’t looked. But by the time I realized that my freedoms couldn’t be in there, and that the president assured me that they were somewhere in Iraq, the two men were already gone.

Well, maybe those boys and girls fighting in Iraq will find my freedoms. I would like to have them back, as well as my hard drive.


Joe Fields

[Massacure]

1. Of course they are always in the last place you look

Anyone who continues looking after they found them needs a lot of help. :P

[Worst Username Ever]

2. I wasn't using my civil liberties anyway....

And anyway today I was checking my desk for WMD, and I can't seem to find those anywhere either...

[Joe Fields]

3. Dick Cheney says he knows, but he's not telling