Where did I put my phone? Heck, where did I put my glasses?  If I could locate my glasses I could probably see my phone. I could get my wife to call my phone to locate it if I could find her.  Let’s see now, her car is under the car port, but she’s not in the house and not at the Dawghouse or the front yard or cleaning up around the pond. Life is getting complicated.  It’s going to be a trifle difficult to explain to my daughter and granddaughter how I managed to misplace their mother/grandmother. My son will understand.  I misplaced him once during a deer hunt.

Laugh if you must, but it’s not funny. 

Many years ago Reidsville High School Principal Greg Maybin arrived home after four basketball games in the Reidsville gym ready for a warm shower and a little shuteye after a long day.  But after a short and terse conversation with his wife Joyce, he decided to forgo the shower for a trip back to Reidsville to pick up his son Will who he’d left at the gym.

One time Mr. Ellie Curry drove from his gas station on Main Street to the old post office across the street from the Nelson Hotel to pick up his mail.  He walked back to the station, and hours later he asked Dan, who was changing oil on a customer’s vehicle, “Where is my car?”  

“I ain’t got no idea,” Dan allowed.  “But you drove off in it early this morning.”

About that time the local policeman, probably Manson Sikes (there was only one in those days), drove up and informed Ellie that his car was sitting unattended across the street from the post office with the engine running.

Age is not the only factor. Last Friday, my nephew Derek Glisson, came from Columbus, GA to meet up with his high school buddy Reverend Shannon Boula to go fishing in Florida.  Reverend Boula arrived and they gathered their fishing tackle and hurried off to Jacksonville to meet their guide.  About two hours later Derek called and asked me to look in his car to see if he’d left his wallet in the center console.  He had, and his cash and credit cards were in it.  He contacted his bank through his cellphone and provided identifying information and cash was sent to him through an ATM.  It worked fairly smoothly which should scare the bejesus out of everyone since it was so easy. They spent the day Saturday catching and releasing bass and trout and flounder since the vast majority were about half an inch too short.  All in all, the trip probably added to his level of frustration that he was hoping to lower with a day of fishing.

What makes this memory issue more exasperating in my case is the fact that I can remember precise details of events that occurred 60 years ago.  Some certainly were important like where and when my future wife first asked me out on a date (she has a conflicting version of that event) or the day the news broke about the Soviet missiles located in Cuba or when Larry Munson broke his chair when Buck Belue and Lindsay Scott saved the 1980 Georgia Championship season at Florida. 

But some things weren’t life changing events like the time Mike Gutierrez and Danny Scott jumped out of the fishing boat on the Ohoopee River to get away from red wasps.  Mike spotted the nest and jumped in the river, and Danny followed simply because Mike jumped in.  He figured Mike had seen something overhead in the willow trees and decided not to wait for a detailed explanation. Perhaps I remember that because laughter caused a cramp in my jaw muscles.  

But these days walking to my shop to retrieve a needed tool can become a futile mission because by the time I get where I’m going I have no idea what I went for.

The point is, medical science has to get off their hindquarters and onto their feet to get this problem solved. If a vaccination can be developed to protect against COVID, surely a memory button could be programed into my Garmin watch to help me remember where I put my glasses.

At any rate, my wife just walked in, and she allowed that we can use her phone to locate mine if she can find hers…