I have written about my absent-mindedness before, in 2018 and in 2023. But I wouldn’t want you to think I am now free of the condition.
Have you ever lost something important, like your keys? Losing your keys at work is maddening because you know they have to be there SOMEWHERE or you never would have made it to work.
That happened to a friend of mine. She noticed about 10 in the morning that her keys were gone, and by 5:00 p.m. that day everyone in the office had looked for those keys - on her desk, in her desk, in file folders, behind her desk, under the two stuffed chairs in her office, under rugs, in the parking lot, in her car, in envelopes she had put in the mail, everywhere in the office she had been and everywhere in the office she had not been. By the time we left work at five (fortunately my friend had a spare key to her car), I was beginning to think that elves or aliens had spirited the keys away. I asked her to text me when she found them.
No texts came to me that night. Instead, she got a phone call the next morning.
Leaving the house the morning after she lost her keys, I reached into the outer pocket of my purse and pulled out my keys to lock the front door. I looked through the keyring a few times, trying to figure out why my house key was missing, when the penny dropped. I was holding my friend’s keys in my hand! Remembering that I had been in her office the day before., I realized I must have put my hands on the keys and, without thinking, slipped them into my purse because that’s where keys go. I would prefer to believe that aliens or elves or Bigfoot or the Tooth Fairy slipped those keys into my purse when I wasn't around, but my friend and I know the truth. The mind like a steel sieve struck again!
