The karmic importance of returning lost items

I’m so mad. I’m mad as heck! I lost my keys this morning. Some time after using them to check my PO box, they disappeared. I went back to there to ask around, which wasn’t easy because down at the stamp-vending end of the post office hall it was hard to get people to stop hollering at me to get my bike out of there long enough to explain that I couldn’t leave my bike anywhere because I’d lost my keys and was trying to see if they’d been turned in. Sheesh. Would you guys calm down a sec and let me get two words out? Finally I got two nice ones to listen and they went in the back to take a look. No luck.

Then I went back down to the PO box end, where they’re usually cool with the bike inside (thanks to my training), but no, they didn’t have them down there either.

OK, I’m broadcasting this message out into the atmosphere -- and I mean that in the literal blogosphere sense, but also in the metaphysical sense: If you found my keys, could you please use one of the identifying member-tags found on the keychain to turn them in at one of three possible locations? Or simply drop them into a mailbox? Please? Because I always turn your stuff in when I find it, if there’s any possible way to do it. So to pay me back, could you please get them back to me, and as promptly as possible? This would eliminate the huge expenditure of energy that will be required if I have to replace each of those keys one by one. And yes, of course I have extras of some of them, but I’d still have to make extra extras. Not to mention the money it will cost for duplicates and replacement fines. It’s a giant pain, an expense, a time usurper -- a waste on all fronts.

And if by chance you have tossed them into the bottom of your briefcase or shopping cart because you were in a huge hurry at the moment you found them, please remember them later today instead of running across them three weeks from now and wondering where they came from.

If you return them, I’m not promising to become a nun as I might have a few decades ago; but you will have greatly restored a large amount of a faith in humanity that I’d really enjoy having. Thank you in advance for your kindness and consideration.