WHAT’S SO FUNNY:Dude, where’s my key?

I had been pleased with myself lately. Things had been going well with my work. I felt sharp. At my mental peak.

Then last Friday around 5 p.m. I drove down to China Bistro. I had a simple plan: I would make a to-go order, drive over to Albertson’s, buy some groceries including some ice cream for Patti Jo, and then drive back to China Bistro and pick up the food order quickly so I’d make it home before the ice cream melted.

It all worked perfectly until I carried the to-go order out to my car and found that my keys were gone.

They weren’t in my left front pocket where I keep them. They weren’t in my right front pocket where I occasionally keep them. I looked in the car window and they weren’t in the ignition.

They weren’t in the box of food. They weren’t on the 25 feet of ground between the car and the restaurant counter.

The car-key section of my brain works automatically. It initiates the same sequence of actions whenever I get out of the car, including locking the door and putting the keys in my left front pocket. I vary the sequence only when I have more than the usual items in my hands.

In the restaurant I had had a book, my wallet, my reading glasses, my pocket cash and finally the box of food.

I had a vague sense that I had varied the sequence slightly at some point, but I had no idea how.

So I stood outside my car, completely baffled. My brain had crunched up like an accordion. I called Patti Jo to come pick up her ice cream and let me into my car, but she didn’t know where the other keys were. I didn’t know where they were either, of course. I didn’t know anything.

I was about to call AAA and then a long-term care facility when I finally found the keys “” in my back pocket, under my wallet, where I’d put them while I was counting out the cash at the counter.

I’d never put my keys in my back pocket in my life. At the moment I did it, it must have seemed deft.

I got home in good time. The whole episode had lasted five minutes or so. The ice cream hadn’t melted “” only my self-image.

I wouldn’t call it the beginning of the end. The beginning of the end came the first time I went to put my reading glasses on over my other reading glasses. It’s more like a signal that the finish is approaching faster than I thought “” like one of those signs reading, “Freeway ends, 500 ft.”

Or make it 25 feet, because that’s how far I had to walk to go from Mental Peak over the hill and down to Clueless Valley.