I can no longer be of service to you

Did you really think I could stop them? Silly plan. You wore me around your neck, believing that if you kept me close to your heart, you would always know where I was; the snacks would be safe; the presents covert; the candy wrappers, unopened. How silly. I only enticed them more to find out what was hidden behind those dark blue cabinet doors.

Did you really think I, a frail little key, could stop the same boys who at age 5, climbed on top of the van, and then through the rafters of the garage, and precariously pulled down treasure after treasure? Or the same boys who, at the age of 2, crawled out of their beds in the morning, went downstairs and pulled out the tub of ice cream, and began to “indulge themselves?”

I couldn’t stop laughing, while I dangled around your neck, the night you put your little boys asleep, and later discovered 20 Halloween candy wrappers all over the floor of their room. “I never heard them get up! How did they eat this and get back to sleep so fast?,” you said. It was the older brothers, my dear Susie, who tricked you. Oh, how they still laugh about that one, and me too.

Maybe you forgot about the day when you wrapped their presents in garbage bags and hid them in the garage, only to have them opened, with Christmas wrapping paper all over the garage floor. I tell you, SusieJ, they can smell presents. They know where they are, and I cannot help you.

I know it’s hard to get out of the house to go to the store with so many charges, so you like to minimize your trips, and buy in bulk. Bulk, to your boys, I’m afraid, means one thing: Feast. I’m sorry that when you pack their lunches in the morning, there will be no snacks left to drop in their brown paper bags.

Smart of you, when you abandoned my brother’s duty to keep the freezer secured. You spent more time looking for that key, while 5 o’clock loomed, while the meat sat frozen in the freezer, than my brother did protecting the cookie dough. You’ll just have to accept that tubs of cookie dough will always have dips from eager, mysterious spoons.

I’m sorry that they have found their Easter Baskets every year before the dawn of Easter morning.

You have given birth to climbers. They have figured out a way to climb on top of the cabinet, loosen the lock, and reach through the other side of the cabinet. So, my duty as the padlock holder is fruitless. The padlock is merely nothing but “decoration.” I hope you still keep me around your neck, as I so enjoy seeing what it is your boys come up with next. However, I’m afraid I will be of no real practical use to you in the future.

Good luck, as you will need it.
Your Master Key.