Surprises in the Snow

Surprises in the snow. The Super Bowl glow continues and social media helps me find a friend with a special tool to find my keys.

People I talk to who use Facebook often come up with really good examples of why it’s useful (not defensively... ok sort of… and it’s really not  just for stalking exes or seeing pictures of the Empire State Building all lit up in green and gold). It’s a quick and helpful tool to poll folks who dabble in each other’s lives who — to queries, requests, urgent need from needing snow pants in size seven boys to a fifth of vermouth. In my case, “Does anyone know how I can find a set of carkeys in over 4 feet of snow all over my lawn?”respond quickly

Here’s what happened last week:

Early Monday morning at the wee hour of 5 a.m., I grabbed the keys and went out looking for my running shoes in our little red car. At the same time, my friend pulled into my driveway for our foray to the fitness center, so I thought I’d springily hop the mound of snow to my front door to drop off my keys and grab my other shoes.

Not so much. After tripping over the ledge of snow at my driveway, I did a complete body roll in my workout togs (hadn’t zipped the coat — snowy!)… over and over in the snow to my front door.

Fast forward to the blizzard, which came the next day. Coincidentally, I could still not find my keys.

With the 5 feet drifts over the front yard up to the door, a growing sense of unease formed after searching every possible place they could be. Could they have actually fallen out of my pocket when I rolled in the snow? If this could be the case, how would I find them? I couldn’t even see the garbage karts, or the bench in the front yard.

“Bring on the Facebook,” I cried. I posted: “Think I lost keys in snow — anyone got a metal detector?” I got quite a few titillating suggestions like “get a giant magnet,” or “get new keys,” plus a few suggestions about my character and not running around that early for any reason… and finally, one “key” friend, Laurie Arendt, a helpful and persevering person I am so grateful to know, from Cedarburg, who indeed, owns a metal detector of the pirate bounty variety.

And as luck would have it, this past weekend, her daughter had a violin lesson in, you guessed it, Shorewood. So she came, she fired up the (battery operated, waterproof, double-sided-disk) metal detector, and we began the hunt.

She powered up the machine, much to the fascination of my 7-year-old son, watching these moms on a mission. I shoveled and she stared down the random leaves as I shook the snow. A false alarm yielded the bench. Another, the shovel. Cranking up the sensitivity and digging down into the snow made things more interesting and caused the dial to wildly anticipate success, but minutes turned to an hour with no results. Finally, she instructed me (she being the experienced detector in the case) to tunnel a bit around the area where I did my hijinks earlier in the week, to fit the platen in between the shelves of snow. More buzz and twinkles on the dial but no keys. Finally, as we were ready to give up (and Sendik’s was holding some grapefruit for her), she made a final pass over the loose snow I had just dug up. And there, in the snow, were my keys.

Never underestimate the power of two women on a mission, of a metal detector, or Facebook.

In this case, I found a friend with a metal detector and found my car keys under 5 feet of snow. Happy to keep the Super Bowl glow going, and now we have a business model that we can offer you if you need it.