1. The key

I remember the moment I realised that my father used a key as a swab to clean his ears. There was one in particular he preferred, the living room key, because it was thinner and longer than the others. According to him, a key was more effective than a swab, though he was slightly more careful when handling it, given some of its sharper edges. We all know that a key’s primary function is to open a door, but what if we suddenly used it to cut something, like a knife, or as a letter opener? Would that be surprising? Probably not. And what if I used a set of keys to create a sound that my family’s dogs would associate with going to the park? The degree of surprise would be less than using it as a swab, yet the key's function still shifts away from opening a door.