things I do with my keys

This morning I couldn't find my keys. I was running late for an appointment and they weren't in any of the usual places. I got a sinking feeling in my gut and opened the apartment door to find them, sure enough, hanging in the keyhole on the outside of my apartment.

They'd been there all night, like an open invitation. I had come home yesterday evening with four bags of groceries and -- well, you can visualize the scene: put down the bags, unlock the door, pick up the bags without removing the keys, close the door, and then with full hands completely block the memory of the keys still outside, and latch the door (so that no one could have gotten in anyway). When I arrived home this evening, I had a fleeting thought as I unlocked the door, that someone very devious could have stolen the keys in the night and had them copied, then replaced them as if nothing had happened, so that he could come back while I was out during the day and clean me out. But I breathed freely when I saw everything was just as I left it.

I had a similar "Alzheimer's moment" about a year ago, also when my husband was out of the country, as he is now, and that is a factor that makes me wonder: Am I more spaced out because he's not around? That time, I checked the mail inside the entrance to our building just before going out, and went away with the mail, leaving the keys hanging there from my box for hours, until I returned home and needed to get into the apartment and couldn't find the keys in my purse.

Such experiences of one's own idiocy are acutely painful.

But it gets worse. Just a few months ago, in the summer, I took my daughter to get a haircut. Because she talks nonstop, my brain frequently fails to function when she's around, and when we got out of the car, I just walked away leaving the keys still in it, and unlocked. I had parked on a busy street, and no one even noticed, apparently. It was only as we were returning to the car, two hours later, that I searched for the key in my bag and immediately realized I'd never taken them out of the car (or locked it, obviously).

But to make this true story stranger than fiction -- this you won't believe, but unfortunately I swear I'm not making it up -- just one week later, I did the same thing again (once again, my chattering daughter was with me, but honestly, how much can one blame on a 13-year-old?) This time I upped the ante, though, because I had actually left the car running! Unbelievably, I had parked in a free open parking lot in the middle of my quiet little suburb and left the car running, with the windows open, for two hours. The shock of realizing I had done this again, only worse, shook me up.

Am I going senile? Should I be chaperoned at all times? Perhaps my name should be pinned to my shirt? Maybe it's a gingko deficiency? This airheadedness is disturbing. I've been awfully lucky so far -- four lapses and no consequences -- but the odds say that can't go on forever. Maybe the patron saint of senility is watching over me.

By the way, I thought my tank would be empty, but you'd be surprised how little gas is consumed by cars just sitting in parking lots without moving.