I’ve had my current keyboard since 2002. It had gotten so nasty the A key was sticking. The 1 key wasn’t much better. Thus, my backspace key was getting overtime duty.

I’d stuck it in the dishwasher a few months ago in an effort to avoid having to pop all the keys off, but that didn’t help get the gunk out.

So Sunday, I guess it was, I popped the keys off to clean it out and I mined treasures galore. But the thing was, when I went to put the keys back on, I was stumped by something I had never noticed before.

The E, I, O, A, S, D, L, C, N, M keys are totally blank now. The letters on the R, T, H, K, and V keys are half gone. I could only tell the C, N, M, <, and > keys because of the 1-mm deep grooves carved into them by my fingernails.

I actually don’t know which blank keys ended up where. Good thing that doesn’t matter.