I Almost Forgot

When people get older, they are allowed to blame their advanced age on random slips of the memory. Children can get away with it because they’re young and don’t know any better. So what excuse can a not quite middle-aged hottie blogger use when she looks back on her life and realizes that the old adage, “If you head wasn’t screwed on, you’d probably lose it” should be embroidered, framed, and hung around her conveniently attached neck.

Once when I was fourteen, I forgot my incredibly spectacular black purse on a TTC bus. Moron that I am, I didn’t realize it for another 15 minutes at which point I ran to my brother, BBA, in tears begging him to resolve this latest crisis in my life. BBA may have been a pain when I was 16, and he’s probably a bigger pain now but that day he was world’s most awesome brother. We piled into my parents’ 1981 Toyota Celica and chased the bus looking for my purse.

I was lucky that day: a Good Samaritan had handed my purse in to the bus driver and I had an awesome brother who was willing to chase random buses for thirty minutes through suburbia. The following year, proving that I never, ever learn my lesson, I lost my wallet on the bus. About a month or so later I received a package in the mail from another Good Samaritan.

Sadly, my teens were not the end of my stupid, forgetful years. Over the years I have forgotten jackets in restaurants, books on airplanes, and bags at the grocery store after I’ve paid for them.

Last week may have been the pinnacle of my forgetfulness. I was in the library reading various blogs and texting my friend Adelpha at the same time. Each time finished with the phone, I tucked it on the big comfy chair next to me and continued with my reading. At 4:30 p.m. I packed everything and walked leisurely to the bus stop, barely even pausing in front of the McDonald’s before boarding the bus.

Seated comfortably in a window seat, I reached into my purse for my cell phone to call Hubby. It was around this moment that I began hyperventilating. “Oh great freaked frak, I just lost my phone!” I whispered, my voice quivering.

I tore off the bus; terrified my phone was gone – stolen. Then became even more terrified because that meant I would have no way of keeping in touch with Hubby while he was in the UK. Then I realized I would have to tell Hubby I had lost my phone. “Crap!” I started to walk as quickly and with as much dignity as possible back to the library.

On my way, I saw Miss Four to whom I was embarrassingly rude in my quest to find my phone. By the time I reached my seat in the library I realized that the delay of finding my phone meant that I would probably miss my bus on top of everything else. That’s when I saw it sitting there looking all lonely and forlorn. “Thank God!” I said rather loudly. When several people looked at me I showed them the phone and they just smiled in sympathy.

I am fairly certain after all these years that I have a guardian angel whose sole job is to make sure I don’t lose anything important. I keep him employed fulltime and I’m fairly certain that he wants a day or two off from his duties of keeping me in line. I appreciate my Forgetfulness Angel more than you can imagine because I can’t blame age, pregnancy, or even disease on my bad memory. Maybe it’s part of my charm?