Car Keys, Cattle, and Carnage - Part I, in which the stage is set.

More than a year after this actual saga took place, I finally feel myself far enough detached from all the gory details to actually record the sequence of events. I record them because it is a ridiculous story that we will want to remember someday. And there are so many details involved that I don't trust my brain to retain them for posterity.

Our story begins on a muggy Friday evening in mid July of 2009. Bedtime for the girls was approaching, and I was planning a trip to Publix to pick up fruit for the tray I was to bring to a baby shower the next morning. After the girls were tucked snug in their beds, I went to the drawer where we usually keep the keys to our van. No keys were to be found within. Jessie and I scanned all the alternate places where keys might be carelessly laid by one of us - still no keys. After about a half hour of more in depth searching with no results, we realized that Publix was going to close soon and we'd have to abandon the search until later. Not wanting to entrust Jessie with the job of choosing the fruit for my tray, I decided to take his work truck myself and make the quick dash to Publix and back. Note: I had never used his truck before, and we never use it for personal errands - it was deemed a desperate times call for desperate measures sort of situation.

We didn't even know the meaning of the word 'desperate' at that point, but we soon would...

To Be Continued.