What does ADHD look like in a grown woman? Ask my keys.

Last month, I took my car in to get it serviced. When I handed my keys over to the man behind the counter, he chuckled and held up my keychain. It’s one of those kitschy plastic ones that looks like it came from an old roadside motel. It was a gift from my brother, and I really appreciate it.

“Oh yeah,” I said to the man. “It’s appropriate because it answers the question I’m usually yelling to no one.”

Instead of a room number, my keychain says: “Here are my f-ing keys.”

Then, because I’m me, I immediately began to pepper him with questions about the kinds of keychains he sees on the job. He told me about some of his favorites: pictures of cute kids — or better, pets—and the zippy long chains favored by letter carriers. And then he told me to go wait while men in jumpsuits made zoop-zoop noises on my Honda for about an hour.

I should note that I rarely fully lose my keys — as in leave them somewhere (although that did happen recently, but that’s because of an unfortunate coat pocket situation). I’m not one of those people whose keys are so lost that they can’t do what they need to do. Instead, my keys (and my phone, and my headphones, and my coffee cup, and my cap, and my sanity) are typically what I call “soft lost,” which is to say that they’re wherever I last had them and I just don’t remember where that is.

In public and when I’m traveling, I develop a near-pathological triple-tapping routine of checking for my keys/wallet/phone. But at home? Where I live? And spend conservatively 96% of my time? Nope. Home is where I can let go of my constant terror of losing things and, you know, lose them. Softly.

Places I’ve lost my keys in the house include:

• The bathroom counter
• The bedside table
• The ledge of one of my raised garden beds
• The guest bedroom
• The laundry room

There’s a reason, of course, why each of these locations became a temporary resting spot for my keys. I took my keys out of my pocket while in the bathroom so they wouldn’t fall in the toilet. I left them in the laundry room because I found them in a pocket. You get it.