If only I could remember why

I stole the title from my partner, Rebecca, who frequently loses her phone. As Bob Dylan, someone even older than me, says, it’s OK to pilfer material if you make it your own. Whatever that means, but hey, cut him some slack, he’s 84.

Rebecca’s 74, and I’m 76. Occasionally, we feel our ages, our precise chronology. Not the pretend timeline we both hide behind because of favorable genes, and, at least for my sweetheart, jeans.

We could each pass for 65. That’s a sad sentence, isn’t it? It’s so easy to talk ourselves into the advantages of elderhood, the wisdom hard won, the experience hard earned, and the freedom hard fought, which results in the exaltation to care less about what the world thinks of us.

Sorry, I’ve momentarily lost my train of thought. Why is that U-Haul photo there?

This lapse happens to everyone, doesn’t it?

But, of course, dear imaginary reader, you’ll forgive me. Like I forgave Bob. I see the patronizing gaze in your eyes. It’s the look I naturally gave my mother, who, at 90, told me she had to get home to take care of her father, who had died in 1944.

“I’m projecting,” you think.

You’re probably right, as it seems transferring my unconscious thoughts to you is hard-wired. You really don’t see me as a doddering old fool. Needless to say, if you’re of my dotage, your natural empathy for me might be inhibited because of what it might say about you.

I’m getting tired of thinking about this, so I’ll get back to the U-Haul in the first photo and the filched title. When I parked the truck in our driveway, I had driven 323 miles from southwest to northeast Iowa. We are downsizing from two homes to one. More about that in another story.

After I unloaded the cargo, with help from two Luther College wrestlers who run a moving service, I drove the moving van to the local U-Haul outlet.

The next day, as I prepared for my 10,000-step daily hike, I could not find my sunglasses. The case with the specs was nowhere to be found.

Unless, I thought, I had left them on the seat of the truck. I remember thinking about putting them on the day before as I was driving the six hours from one home to another. Fortunately, my lorry was waiting for me in the parking lot to search and seize, if only I could find.

I knew it was mine among the five identical fleet marked 15-footers because I found the half-eaten cheese sandwich Rebecca had prepared that somehow had migrated to the well area behind the driver’s seat. However, no sunglasses.

When I came back a third time, yesterday, the owner gave me that look. He tried not to. But it was there.

So I hoisted myself up yet again into the cabin you see in the first photo. It has to be here. As I crawled into the driver’s seat on my knees, my eyes caught sight of the triangular prism of the case wedged into the area you see below.

I knew it!

As I slowly edged my butt out, making sure to find the drop step to the ground, I turned around and waved the prize to the owner, who, with a smile, said

Well done, Sir.

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