It was the last week of school and I had been putting things away, packing boxes and stacking books all day. I was tired and ready to head home. I looked for my keys on my desk and they were gone. I moved a few things around on the desk, still no keys. I needed those keys to lock the door of my classroom, not to mention to unlock it in the morning. In desperation I turned to my teaching assistant.“Have you seen my keys? I can’t find them and it’s almost time to go.”Instead of answering she broke into a broad grin and pointed toward my left hand. I looked down and there, dangling from the long navy strap, were my keys. It got off with me when I realized I’d been holding them the entire time.“She got she keys,” Julie said and burst out laughing.“What?” I knew it was funny, but not that funny.“She got she keys,” Julie repeated. Then, with a smile, she told me the story behind the phrase.When my girls were little, ages two and four, I was a single parent and sometimes pretty stressed out with the two girls. We went shopping one day and, as kids can be, they were full of energy and excitement. It took all my energy to keep up with the two. Finally we finished our shopping and headed for the car. As I approached the car with my buggy filled with two toddlers and various shopping bags I reached for my purse in the top basket and it wasn’t there! Already stressed from the strain of being a single parent, shopping alone with two small children and trying to stretch my meager salary to cover our needs, I completely lost it when I realized both my purse and keys were missing. "Oh, no," I wailed, "I’ve lost my purse and my keys!"The girls both watched with big rounded eyes as I searched frantically through the buggy, pushing their little bodies to the side searching for the missing purse. The four-year-old turned to the two-year-old and, with a long suffering sigh, said, “She got she keys.”The two-year-old nodded and said, “She got she pocket book.” Their childish baby talk finally got through the panic that had seized me and I looked down to see my purse tucked safely beneath my right arm and my keys held in a death grip by my left hand. My assistant finished her story.For the remainder of the school year it was “She got she keys” or “She got she pocket book” every time we headed out of the classroom.
