The Key to Optimism

September 14, 2026

Greetings from the other hand,

I am an optimist. (Not the eye-doctor kind, the ‘glass-half-full’ kind.)  There is no certification for this, I didn’t have to pass a test or pay a registration fee. You might wonder how I qualify, and I’ll confess some days it is more of a guess than a considered choice.

I was at a wedding this weekend, nosing around before the event in the gazebo where the ceremony would occur.  It was a lovely setting, surrounded by trees, a nice breeze easing the warm afternoon. I looked down at the deck flooring, eyeing the expansion space between the boards. My friend Kristen, who was about to be married, asked what I was looking at. 

What I should have said was “Just admiring this beautiful space where the two of you will promise one another a brilliant future.”  But instead, I said, “Wondering where the ring would fall if you dropped it during the ceremony.”

This kind of comment is not the only reason I am rarely invited to weddings, or any place where mature people gather, but it is on the list. 

Here I will admit to an idiosyncrasy. (A personality quirk, not the political party) My mind sometimes plays games with me. Well, less of a game and more of a practical joke.

Whenever I get out of my car in a parking lot, if there is a sewer grate nearby, I get a little jolt of electricity in my solar plexus (my abdomen, not the collection of planets). I automatically grab my pocket to make sure my key is safely captured there. 

I have good imagination, and sometimes it shares with me these little previews of coming attractions.  In this instance, my car key somehow escapes my pocket, and I bobble it several times in the air before it drops between the key shaped openings in the sewer grate.  In this preview there is gasping sound (mine) and a plopping sound (the key’s, as it swan-dives into the murky wetness waiting at the bottom of the sewer). And then I am stranded forever at Tractor Supply Company.

In order to avoid this feeling, I intentionally park my car away from sewer grates.  Most of the time it’s easy to do unless I am driving with someone who cares how far it is from my car to whatever front door is the goal of parking here. This minor compulsion could also explain why I have difficulty navigating between the parking spots marked by yellow lines painted (arbitrarily, I feel) on the parking lot.

I have a similar reaction when I get on hotel elevators.  I step across the threshold, and eye the minor space between the floor and the elevator car, and I am immediately shown the preview of my credit card, room card, driver’s license, car key and/or sunglasses slipping from my hands and somehow threading the impossible needle that leads into the elevator shaft.  Somewhere at the bottom they would be taken by the troll that lives there who would probably steal my identity and my sunglasses would make him look like James Bond, which is the look I’ve aspired to and failed.

For some reason I do not have the same reaction with escalators.  But now that I think about it, I’ll add it to the experience. Also, the gap between the plane and the gangway.  Oh, and the space between the subway and the platform.  Now that I think about it, there are heating vents in every room in my house that look suspicious.

I must add that I have never dropped my keys into a sewer grate.  Or anywhere.  One could say that this is in part because it is incredibly unlikely that something like this could happen.  Or it is because I have been guarding effectively against the possibility for my entire life.  In either case, it might be an unreasonable fear to consider the likelihood of it ever happening.  Unless it might.

My friend Kristen is no stranger to calamity. She is an adventurous world traveler, a daring explorer of living, a willing participant in human experience, and she has had her share of challenges. But she always manages to navigate them with aplomb, so she was not flustered by my ill-considered comment just minutes before she would be married.  She looked at me with the patient understanding one applies toward children, and suggested I might be more comfortable waiting in my car.  Which I would have been, once I got around the sewer grate.

The wedding went beautifully and the children that brought the rings never faltered and the marriage began without the distraction of climbing under the gazebo.  I like to think that it was because my suggestion about the potential encouraged caution and averted disaster.  It’s not true, but I like to think it anyway. Because I’m an optimist.

Hope this finds you parking safely,

David

This essay was written by the author and does not include Ai content.

Copyright © 2026 David Smith