Luck, fate or an assist from above?

How lost keys may have saved our lives

Every so often in life, we experience an event that makes us think about what can be considered a coincidence, pure luck, fate, or maybe even an assist from heaven. I had one of those events during a recent family vacation to beautiful Prince Edward Island.

As we prepared to leave from our home in the western part of Montreal, my wife mentioned that she couldn’t find her keys. Since my father-in-law had just left our house, I assumed that he had taken my wife’s keys to lock the door. So, we got in the car and started driving. About 45 minutes into our trip, my wife called her father to ask him if he had the keys… he said he didn’t.

After a few minutes of checking bags and pockets, we asked the kids if they had seen the keys. Our youngest son said he didn’t touch the keys. When we asked our older son, who has autism and had difficulty expressing himself, he said the keys were “on the seat of the blue car.” Which meant that the keys to both our second car (the blue car) and, more importantly, our house, were in our driveway, in plain view of anyone walking by the car.

Fearing that the car may be stolen during our trip and/or our house broken into, we made the decision to head back home to retrieve the keys. So, we returned home and found the keys in the car, although not where my son had said they were. Once we had the keys, we headed back on our trip. Unfortunately, I decided to follow the GPS’s instructions and got stuck in traffic.

The delay cost us about two hours.

On our trips to PEI, we always make a stop at the aquarium just outside Quebec City. This trip would be no different. However, about 15 minutes outside of Quebec City, I noticed a noise seeming to come from the front wheels of the car; kind of like the wheel was bouncing on the road. Since we were going through a section of highway that was under repair, I didn’t think anything more of the noise… until I pulled into the parking lot at the aquarium. I realized then that there was something wrong with the driver-side front wheel.

So, I left the family at the aquarium and I took the car to a garage. Twenty minutes later (there’s some luck in itself), the mechanic had the car on the rack and had discovered the problem. Three of the five lug-nuts were loose; and two of those were almost completely off!!

The mechanic told me I was lucky to have stopped when I did, otherwise the wheel may have come off the car!

An hour later, all was well and we were back on the road to PEI, but I had some thoughts in my mind…

• What if we hadn’t gone back for the keys? The wheel noise likely would not have occurred when it did… we would have been two hours further down the road. Would I have stopped?
• What if my older son, who as I mentioned has difficulty communicating, hadn’t said he knew where the keys were?
• What if I hadn’t listened to the GPS and took a route with less traffic?
• Interesting that the noise first appeared just before Quebec City…. MY HOMETOWN… where I knew exactly where to take the car.
• What would have happened if the wheel had come off at highway speed? Would my family and I still be here to tell the tale?

Was it luck, fate, or an assist from above? Can’t say for sure, but I like to think it was the latter. Kind of felt like a hug and a pat on the back from my late Dad! 🙂