Here’s a not-funny-at-the-time story from yesterday:
One of my tasks while over at my mom’s yesterday was to make myself a copy of her house key, for the times in the next few months I may need to run over there. My brother Cab left me his key to use.
Simple enough, eh?
About 1:30PM, I drove the five minutes up to the hardware store. I was going to walk up, but the blistering heat yesterday changed my mind. Thank god for that, because when I got there, they were closed for lunch - something unheard of here, especially in a busy university town.
I stood there for a minute, running through my memory of other hardware stores, auto parts stores, DIY stores in town, and finally decided to go with the sure thing, Walmart, even though it was the farthest out, about a 15-minute drive to the edge of town (it wasn’t the edge of town when it was a kid, it was farmland, and the edge of town nowhere near, but that’s progress for you).
Out to Walmart!
Saturday at Walmart, so it was packed and I had to park at the far end of the lot, so off on a slight expedition to get inside and all the way back to the farthest corner to the auto parts section, where the key cutter is.
“We don’ cut keys no more. They’s a machine up front fer that, on the pharm’cy side, brother.”
Back up to the front of the store. I should have packed hiking supplies!
Went to the pharmacy side, where I found a Coinstar machine (counts and rolls coins), so all the way across to the other side, where I found a pet ID tag machine, but no key cutting machine. Off to find an employee…
“Yep, you got tah go back to the pharm’cy side, then go all the way out tah the doors, it’s out there by the carts.”
Got it, good thing “these boots were made for walking.”
Found the machine, next to one of those kids’ claw machines, and was relieved to see it took credit cards, as cash and I are strangers that rarely meet.
The instructions said to place your key in the slot below so it could be mapped, so I pulled out my mom’s key and went to take it off the key fob, and noticed it was some funky screwed-on kind, not the usual kind where you can just slide it off.
Great, just great…now where in the hell am I going to find a little screwdriver, short of buying one?
The optometrist! They adjust glasses! They have little screwdrivers!
Footed it over there, no one out on the floor, so I rang the bell…then rang it again…then a third time. No response.
I heard voices from the back, where the exam rooms are, stuck my head back there, and saw the attendant watching TV, turned way up.
“Excuse me, I rang the bell, but I don’t think you heard me, but I was wonderi-“
“That bell’s broke.”
No, that bell is fine, but that TV is far too loud.
“Anyway, I just need to unscrew this little post on this keychain, to make a copy of this key, and I was hoping you had a little screwdriver for that.”
Thankfully, she pulled one out of her lab coat, gave it to me, and I had the key off in short order. Back to the machine…
Stuck the key in, made my payment, included a dollar for the Arbor Day Foundation to plant a tree somewhere, waited 3.47 minutes, and…clink-clink…my new key came tumbling out of the machine. Finally!
Set everything down on a nearby flat surface, so I could put the original key back on the key fob.
It was a bit fiddly, something my hands aren’t good at, what with perpetually sore tendons and things - I had to hold the main part of it in one hand, position the key, then run the threaded post in one side of fob, through the key, into the other side, then hand-tightened to hold it together until it could be fully tightened with the screwdriver.
If that sounds a bit fussy…it is. I held everything together, got the post in one side, through the key, headed for the other side when…the post and key both slipped out of my hands and the post dutifully rolled right up under the key cutting machine.
Down on my belly on the super-clean floors of Walmart, and I could just see it. Stuck my hand under there amongst the dead bugs and old bottle caps, but it was just out of reach. Off to find an employee with a stick or something similar.
Found that, got back down on my belly, one eye closed like someone looking through a spyglass, took a swipe…a second swipe…connected on the third swipe, out rolled the little post…and it rolled right up under the claw machine.
Further examination revealed the claw machine sat much lower to the floor than the key machine, so I had to find something thinner, and ended up using my credit card to poke and jab several times, all while people stepped around me while I was belly-flopped on the floor.
Finally…finally, I got everything back together. Hey, what should have been a 15-minute task took over an hour, but all’s well that ends well.
That’s when I looked back at the machine, which was playing a little instructional video on how to use it, and noticed there was absolutely no need to have removed the key from the keychain, something I didn’t even realize
as I was doing it.
The ileus was caused by the antibiotics, for which I will get an alternative. Am on my way home again! 
