Keyless and Clueless

Americans, at least the overwhelming majority who live in urban areas, instinctively lock things. Tight. It’s an integral part of modern life. We lock, therefore, we’re safe. Keys for the house. Keys for the car. Keys for the office, the desk, supplies, mailbox, locker, gate, even luggage. For some reason we lock up bikes but lock down prisons.

When children reach a certain age, they’re presented their own house key and the right to plead for that ultimate freedom symbol, car keys. When couples reach a certain intimacy, they exchange apartment keys even before rings. Attend any mortgage closing and sets of two things change hands: signatures and keys. In malls, what do you see men wearing clipped to belt hoops and women carrying like hand jewelry? So ubiquitous are these chained collections of keys that we decorate them with colorful charms, pithy mottoes, ads and mascots.

Keys -- envision an eagle clutching a key ring with a padlock rampant -- have been key to understanding Americans. But what now, as this society turns keyless? Push-button fobs are replacing car door keys, as are numbered keypads. Now, more new cars even use buttons for starting too. Hotels today prefer programmable electronic cards as room keys. Often, they actually work. But hotels stick with little keys for the mini-bars. (Why are they locked in the first place? To keep the customer out?)

Now comes realization that, increasingly, really new homes use keyless entry systems. Oh, good, you say, another sequence of numbers to memorize and frequently forget. But the trend seems inevitable.

In a decade or so, many locksmiths, like blacksmiths before them, may be out of work as homeowners go for programmable keyless electronic keypads. The upside is no more keys left at the dry cleaner’s. The downside could be that a wily burglar need only determine a couple’s wedding anniversary or their firstborn’s birth date to gain entry to any house on the block.

Oh, and we’ll also need to un-romance all those amorous verses: Roses are red, violets are blue; my heart’s now keyless, so I give my number code to you.