I have the key...

So has anyone seen those new BP gas station commercials? The ones where the cartoon characters are driving around looking for gas, and they drive past these horrible, ugly, dirty gas stations first, until they finally arrive at a sparkling clean BP station? And it’s all flowers and rainbows and happy people and everyone is singing and it’s like the best gas station EVER. I mean, watching the commercial, it would be easy to believe you might even be able to use a BP gas station bathroom without feeling the need for a full-body scrub-down afterwards.

And my first reaction when I saw these ads was, “I hate those stupid BP ads.” They use weird little cartoon-character people, and a song that gets stuck in your head all day (“say hey, say HEY!” Shut up, shut UP!). One of the spots even features a car full of babies, playing with their stuffed teddy bears and driving a car low on gas. What the heck? Why is there a car full of babies? And why are the babies driving? Isn’t it generally considered dangerous to allow an infant to operate a large piece of machinery? Where can they possibly be going? How far have they driven that the car is running dangerously low on gas? Has anyone issued an Amber Alert? That ad is so confusing…

But after seeing these ads a few times, I realized something – the psychedelic haze of cartoon flowers and dancing people and driving babies was actually making me wonder if BP gas stations really ARE better than other gas stations. So much so that I’m actually considering stopping at a BP gas station the next time I see one and my car’s tank happens to be close to empty. Because I’m curious now – will some little dancing guy REALLY come out and clean my windshield? Has the BP gas station conglomerate somehow managed to mask that annoying gasoline smell with the lovely scent of roses? Can I forgo spraying down the entire bathroom with a can of Lysol? Maybe BP really HAS discovered ways to make the whole gas station experience better…

So these annoying ads – as strange and nonsensical that they are – actually DID manage to achieve what they set out to achieve. They somehow coerced me into wanting to visit a BP gas station. Which annoys me even more than the ads themselves. I can’t believe that I hate those commercials so much, yet I still want to visit their gas stations. And it’s just a stupid gas station – how great can it be? Oh, advertising is a very devious medium…

Anyway... moving on to other topics… so last night the weather people were telling us to expect all kinds of crazy storms with hail and tornadoes, so Rick called me from work and asked me to pull the MDX into the one-car garage. The only problem was that as far as I knew, Rick had the one and only key for that garage, and I couldn’t open it. However, a search through the requisite “junk drawer” in my kitchen not only turned up another copy of the garage key (so the MDX was able to spend the night safe and sound in the garage… and we never did get hail… or tornadoes…), but no less than ten OTHER keys that fit absolutely NO locks in or around this house. A couple of them look like they might be from our house back in New Jersey, but the rest of them are anybody’s guess. Five of them are the exact same key… and I’m wondering what was so important that we needed to have FIVE keys made… I guess it must not have been THAT important if I can’t even remember what they’re for…

Rick actually found one key that he thinks was for a car he had about a zillion years ago. A car that probably doesn’t even exist anymore. It’s probably been squished into a cube and is collecting rust in a junkyard. What I find particularly interesting about this completely useless key is that it has been in Rick’s possession from sometime before he met until now – somehow surviving several moves between apartments… a move into our first house… managing to stick with us on our move to New Jersey… and finally making its way back to Texas where it settled comfortably into the kitchen junk drawer. And yet I STILL CAN’T FIND MY CUTTING BOARD.

Maybe it’s locked in a box somewhere… I bet I have the key for it…