2. Toys

Lunchbox Photography/Flickr/Rebecca J. Rosen

We are primed to love keys from an early age. Think of that classic baby toy, a ring of teether keys--a rainbow of smooth-edged plastic keys, safe to chew and shake, subbing in for the real keyrings that babies constantly reach for.

As a child, I wanted keys. The keys I wanted came from books and movies about children and magical places. In Alice in Wonderland, a golden key to unlock the talking door glimmers high atop a glass table, but she can't reach it because she shrank herself (that Drink Me/Eat Me conundrum). The NeverEnding Story showed me Bastian, a bullied bookworm, who skips school to read a gorgeous, magical book in the school attic (rebel!). The key to the attic is kept in a metal box with a broken glass panel on the wall -- coolly, quickly, Bastian steals the key with two fingers. Return to Oz had the keys I wanted most: the key Fairuza Balk's Dorothy plucks from the Kansas mud, as evidence that Oz exists and the ruby key worn around the wrist of the evil Princess Mombi, to open the cabinets that contain other women's heads for her to wear (I swear, this is the real plot).

These kids want to go somewhere they shouldn't. Wonderland. Fantasia. Oz. We love them for it, for their longing.

3. History

fairytalelights/Flickr

Since there have been humans and possessions that those humans valued, there have been locks and keys, or, at least since the first millennium BC, as Louis Zara says in his fascinating little book, Locks and Keys. A locked door says: Stay out, all ye who are keyless (and thus, potential intruders). There were iron keys, wooden keys, keys that were so big they required two people to maneuver them. Keys to sarcophagi, fortresses, and women's nether-regions (a.k.a. keuschheitsgürtel, ceinture de chaseté, chastity belt).

There is a pleasure in looking at old keys, in touching them, studying them. Gothic keys soared and twisted like the drop caps of illuminated manuscripts. Keys of the Renaissance held delicate, ornate bows. The most intricate were the clefs de chef-d'oeuvre -- the French masterpiece keys. These gorgeous creations had no accompanying locks, and served no purpose, other than laying there, sparkling in a box or on the owner's palm.

"The great craftsmen [of keys] of the past," Zara explains, "prior to the 18th century, leaned toward beauty rather than security."

4. Security

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Watch me as I leave my apartment, and you will immediately know my strange attachment to keys. It's not enough to put the key in the lock and turn -- I need to check that the door is actually locked. A few times. Once I'm satisfied that my door is secure, I'll toss the keys, a heavy bunch of metal grapes, into my bag. I can hear their comforting jingling as I walk.

Let's say you need a key today, post-18th century. It's not an artist or a blacksmith you visit. You go to the hardware store. It smells of sawdust and metal. You walk past shelves of nails and screws, paint cans and buckets and snow shovels and mops, to the counter in back. You tell the old man behind the counter that you'd like to make a copy of a key. "You don't even have to take it off your ring," he says. "Wait right here."