Never Lose your Q-cool!

You know how hard it is to do your job without the tools of the trade? Nothing is more annoying than going to hang a picture and being unable to find a hammer. Or going to mow the lawn and finding the lawn mower is out of gas.  Since I write for a living, my biggest tool is my computer.  And this week, I discovered how annoying it is to lose a letter. That’s right a letter. To be exact it was the letter ‘Q’.

It was there when I went to bed the night before, but when I got up it was gone. All the other letters, including the numbers and the punctuation were right where they should be. The button for the letter Q was missing its square cap labeling it as Q. I know it sounds quirky, but things got a little quiet, as I looked for it. I mean how was I supposed to get this column turned in without a Q? I clearly became quiescent.

I thought perhaps it was right here, yet maybe behind something opaque. It really seemed like it couldn’t be far. How far could it get from the quadrant of the living room where my computer is? I was pretty quiet about it until I saw my kids.

 “Hey, Johnny, have you seen the Q from my computer?” I inquired.

 “No, mom,” he said. “I haven’t seen your Q. I’m quite sure it was there last night. Hey, is that a quack I hear outside on the porch? Or maybe it was a squawk.” 

“No,” I said. “I think it’s just the quail that live in the yard. Don’t change the subject when I’m quizzing you” I quipped. “We need to find the Q.”

When I saw my daughter the next day I quizzed her with the same question.

“No, I haven’t seen a loose Q,” she quipped. “Don’t quibble about it, it will turn up.”

I was quaking with frustration. But I acquiesced.

I was really in a quandary. No Q took quite a few words out my lexicon for the day. I didn’t mean to be quixotic about it, but my column was due in the newspaper’s queue.

It wasn’t until the next evening, quite a few hours since the Q had disappeared, that a friend in Johnny’s quartet of cohorts, Austin, heard I was inquiring about it.  I offered them some bisque and quickly cut up a quince as food for thought. We quaffed cumquat juice as we thought. I felt queazy. My quantum misery was unequivocal.

As Johnny’s friends were leaving, Austin queried about the Q. As he perused the quadrant of the room in question he systematically scoured the quadrilateral living room and quickly declared, “Hey, here it is!”

So once again my keyboard was complete! (or could that be quay-board???)

Quickly, I got this column in.

I’ll bet you a quintillion quarters you can guess what I said to Austin.

I simply said, “Thank Q.”