The Onset of Senility?

Nothing makes a middle-aged guy feel like he has graduated to old age like losing his wallet and cell phone on the same day.

The saving grace in both instances involved being able to pinpoint the parameter of misplacing the items.

In the case of the wallet, I remember paying for lunch in the work cafeteria, but I noticed it no longer was in my pocket during my afternoon stroll around the building. Panic ensued.

I checked in the dining room, notified the front desk, told security, informed people in my office. Then I felt the Lord prompting me to look in a desk drawer. There it was! Never in 11 years of working here had I put my billfold in a desk drawer, but for some absentminded reason I did that day. It’s an embarrassment I can live with.

That night when I got home from small group at church, I noticed my phone no longer in the pouch attached to my belt. This is when those am-I-losing-my-mind thoughts really kicked in. Yet I knew the phone had to have fallen out in the car or driveway, or at church. The next day on the way to work I stopped at church and found the phone inside, a few inches from the door.

The dread in losing such items is partly the potential cost of replacing them, but primarily the inconvenience: canceling credit cards, getting a new driver’s license, reprogramming all those stored phone numbers. Thankfully, I didn’t have to go through any of that.

I felt better that next day when I got to work and a much young co-worker told me she had spent 15 minutes that morning looking for her lost car keys. Of course she found them in the most obvious place where she left them the night before: the ignition.