One of the delights of old age is that you can’t find anything unless it’s sitting in its accustomed spot. If you put ANYTHING down where you don’t usually put it down, you might as well have taken it out to the alley and tossed it in the garbage can. Ah yes. The joys of your golden years…
I just bought these gadgets to fight back said joys. How kewl is this?
It’s a set of FOUR radio-activated squawking doohickeys that you can attach to things you’re apt to lose. As soon as the package gets here, one of them is going right on the key ring (assuming the key ring isn’t permanently lost by the next Wednesday, when Amazon promises to deliver it). The other three are going to get Velcroed to phone extensions.
To what, you ask, to we owe this $30 pleasure?
Well, I’ve been sick as a proverbial dog since the 29th — that’s how long it’s been since I’ve gone out of the house. Most of the time has been spent literally sick in bed. Today was the first in four days since I’ve felt like walking around the block.
Normally when I come in the house, I stick the keys in the lock to my office. Take note of that, because…
Once you get past the age of about 60 or 65, if you don’t put the small incidental junk of life down in your accustomed places, you cannot find things. That’s because when you don’t put things down in the same place every single time, you can’t remember were you put it!
That is not an exaggeration. Ask any old bat and they’ll tell you.
Keys and phones are the bane of my life.
So this afternoon is beautiful and today is the first day I’ve felt well enough to move around. Wanted to take the doggies for a stroll. Went to get the keys out of the office door and, wouldn’tcha know it: no keys.
Searched and searched and searched and searched and searched and searched and searched and could NOT find them. Finally in a moment of desperation, I called my son. Sometimes I can look right straight at something and not see it, so there was an outside chance that a fresh pair of eyes could find the lost keys.
Making a call like this is never a jolly thing to do: he does not like his days off interrupted by frantic appeals from his enfeebled mother, who was crazy enough before she started to lose her marbles and who now drives him bats. Unhappily, he agreed to come over later — much later — to help me look
Beside myself with frustration and anger, I walked into the kitchen, glanced at the fridge, and remembered…hm…sometimes I carelessly drop the keys in with the dogs’ leashes and collars, which are stored in a basket atop the refrigerator. I didn’t think I’d taken the dogs out since last Tuesday. But checked anyway, on the off-chance.
And lo! There were the keys, right where I’d dropped them, without a second thought.
Those doohickeys would have saved me about 15 minutes of increasingly frantic searching plus a disagreeable phone call to my unsympathetic son.
Just you wait, kid. One day you’ll be 70, too…
Do you realize that when he’s seventy I’ll be 104?
Oh, God. Let us sincerely hope not…
