Sunday

17 December 2017

— another snow dusting, which will triple this morning’s bird company

Good Morning All,

Like the Coast Guard after two weeks of searching for the missing trawler, I finally called off the search for my set of spare keys. Up in Ringsted, I went to the key-shoelace-cane-and-shoe-insert store, there to discover a new key (with inserted chip) for my Mitsubishi Colt  would cost me only just over a hundred bucks. The daughter of the owner, a lovely Turkish lass with excellent English, told me (and as I had heard before) a new key from the dealer would be about three times that much. So I said, “Well, okay, let’s go for it.”

It took the man forty minutes to get it cut. brushed, and the right code for the inserted chip, including five trips to the car to test his progress. That was fine by me, for I got to shoot the breezes with his daughter, who I’d guess was seventeen or eighteen, the age of most of my students all those years. For me, it was like finding a roomy old flannel shirt  in the bank of the closet.

I realized just how much I miss not being on a daily basis in the presence of people blessed with such youthful buoyancy and optimism and easy humor. People who fairly glow with vitality.

I asked the key-meister’s daughter where she’d learned such excellent English, and she laughed modestly, giving credit to her teachers and all the British and American tv shows. She said it was easier than learning Korean. Turns out, she’d gone to South Korea for a year to do only that (which might have made her closer to twenty.) I asked if she were fluent. Well, no, she said, but somewhere between conversant and fluent.

I asked if she thought the racism in Denmark was getting worse. (Years ago, Denmark had invited Turks to come as guest workers to perform the more menial tasks, and then got annoyed when the Turks stayed and became citizens.) She said she didn’t think so, but maybe she’d been lucky. That would not surprise me. You’d have to be galloping Denmark-for-the-Danes nutcase not to feel uplifted by a girl so outgoing and exuberant.

We chatted while she made me  two new house keys and two new keys for Esther’s apartment, for only a few bucks apiece. Her dad came back from his fifth trip to the car, holding the key high, grinning, and saying, “Working! Now is working!”

I bought a couple of simple key rings (the kind where you torture your fingernails trying to wedge the keys on), some nice anti-stink-up-the-room inner soles for my new Jacoform shoes, and some brown shoe polish, such that I got away for just over $120.00.

Pulling into my driveway, I was more or less assuming I’d open the from door and there would be the missing keys in the middle of the front hall carpet, having walked and crawled from wherever they’d been hiding. I’m happy to report that did not happen. But I figure it’s only a matter of another day or two now that they know I’m not looking for them.

Go Well and Stay Well,

Bheka

P.S. One Johs and one Holly snap.