Losing Stuff

THE OTHER DAY I walked over to the senior center, a book and notebook in hand, just in case (just in case nobody there had any entertaining conversation to offer me). Read the paper, drink coffee, run on the treadmill, and chat with the other elderly. You come to feel comfortable at a senior center, rather like you do in kindergarten. I ran, chatted, didn't need my books, left, walked home, and realized that I had left my books back at the center. Short term memory begins to vanish at the age of twenty five, which for me was thirty six years ago. I walked back to the center, trying to decide whether to be angry with myself, or to choose a victim at random. They (the books) were gone. Haven't been seen since. Probably some eighty five year old thought they were the Bible, and couldn't resist. I wish I wouldn't do things like that, but I have my entire life. But so, apparently, has everyone else. The average human being, particularly the average American, by the time he or she reaches sixty, has misplaced, incredibly, an average of two hundred thousand personal possessions. A thirty billion dollar a year industry could be had finding lost items, if only somebody could find them. This is not a matter of senility, so it seems, but rather, a mere matter of too many things, too little time, and too many distractions. Suddenly< I don't feel so bad. I just wish I hadn't lost such a good book> I was only halfway through it, and the killer had not yet been caught...Postscript: This story has a happy ending. Turns out I left the books in the back room, where I had set them down on a table, for just a moment, while stocking canned goods in the pantry. The table then became covered with other books and papers, and, well....this means that I have only one hundred ninety nine thousand nine hundred and ninety nine personal possessions to find. PPS: It is said that the difference between absent mindedness and dementia is that an absent minded person forgets where the car keys are, and a person with dementia finds the keys, but forgets their purpose.