When I was a youngster, I used to lose my keys all the time. It drove my mother crazy. Every time I did that, it turned into an ordeal. It meant finding a locksmith to change the locks, providing everyone in the household with a new set of keys, and spending money that was not in the budget.

Now that I’m writing about my carelessness, I can better understand why my mother was so upset. Back then, I didn’t see what the big deal was. It seemed like an easy cure to me.

Just as with many other things in life, I should have been born in these times. If you lose your keys in the digital age, all you have to do is reach for the clouds to retrieve another one. Wait till your hear this.

A new startup (there’s that word again) called KeyMe is putting kiosks in 7-Elevens across the nation so that you will be able to store a copy of your house key in the cloud and print a new metal one right on the spot if you ever need an extra copy.

This could have saved me a lot of grief. The first set of kiosks are in different Manhattan locations. Users are asked to scan and store key creation information in the cloud. That is completely free. Now comes the part my mother used to get upset about. Replacements cost approximately $20.

By now you must be thinking, this idea is a recipe for disaster. Thieves are all over the place. Not so. KeyMe requires you to scan your fingerprints when you set up your account, so you are the only one who can access the data needed for a duplicate key. Nice!