I once lost my keys at a frat house.
My drunk ass had actually walked home without them, pounded on my apartment door, gotten let in by my rightfully-disgruntled roommate, and proceeded to pass out on the couch. Apparently I puked in the toilet before passing out. I do not remember this part.
The next morning, I schlepped back to the frat house. I stood there, right in front of the front door. This was a novel experience for me. Iâd never been at a frat house in broad daylight before.
A boy, presumably, of the house, asked me what I was doing.Â
âI lost my keys in here last night,â I called back.  âI was seeing if I could go in and look for them?â
He opened the door and gestured for me to come in.
âGo wherever you want.â
Iâd never seen a frat house post-party before. Wandering up the stairs and through the halls, I was surrounded by hungover and still-drunk frat boys stumbling around in their socks and sandals and gym shorts, seeking out food and showers like moths to a porch light. A few of them threw puzzled glances my way. Iâm sure they thought I was some post-bacchanalia hallucination.
I entered one room where a boy was drunkenly watching some Old Yeller-esque movie on a tiny TV in the corner of his room from his bed.
âDo you like dog movies?â he asked, voice all mumbly from grogginess and also from the fact that his face was squished against his pillow and half-buried by his blanket.
He mumbled again, pleased, and asked what I was doing. I told him I was looking for my keys.
âSorry, I havenât seen any keys around here.â
Twenty minutes had passed. Iâd searched just about every bedroom and nuclear-waste-dump-site of a bathroom in that house. Iâd given up on ever finding my keys and was prepared to beg my roommatesâ forgiveness and get a new set copied.
As I stood there in the hallway, silently bewailing my predicament, a particularly-burly frat boy approached me.
âYou need help with something?â
âI lost my keys here last night and I canât find them, Iâve looked everywhere.â
âWhat do they look like? Iâll put it into the group chat.â He was already pulling out his phone.
No one ever checks a group chat, I thought, but what the hell. It was worth a shot.  âUm, itâs just a ring of keys. The keychain is a pink plastic cat, though, like yea big. Like bright pink, you canât miss it.â
He nodded, presumably typing this description faithfully into the group chat.
âAlright, I sent the message out. Good luck.â
And with that, he turned and left.
A few moments later, I heard a distant thundering. It was coming from upstairs, and it was getting louder and louder. One assumes that how I felt in that moment was how Simba felt seeing the wildebeest stampede through the ravine as a horde of large young men all thundered down the stairs, making a beeling for me.
âSomeone tell the girl!â One of them shouted, faceless in the mob. âGirl! Hey, GIRL!!!  We found your keys, girl!!!â
They circled around me. I hadnât felt that small since I was maybe eleven years old. One of them split himself off from the crowd.
âAre these -â he pulled out a ring of keys from his pocket, âyour keys?â
And lo, there was the distinctive bright millennial pink cat keychain dangling off the ring.
âYes,â I whispered.  âOh my god, yes.â
âEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!â
Turns out he found them in the bathroom upstairs. I thanked them again profusely. There was a scattered round of âno problemsâ and then, just as suddenly as they descended, they all dispersed, like ships in the night.
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