“Hey Mac, have you seen my hairbrush?”

“Yes honey, I think it’s outside, on top of the bin where we put the garden clippings.”

And there it was.

Good Lord! What is that all about.

“Have you seen my glasses?”

“Yes honey, they’re on top of your head.”

I’m pretty sure she says ‘honey’ to soften the obvious blow, each ‘have you seen’ question underscoring a really, really disappointing part of getting older.

Yikes!

I have read that the human brain has an infinite capacity to remember stuff (forgive the colloquial reference to ‘stuff’) but if I am any example that does not come with an equal capacity to store ‘stuff’. I am forced to concede that age has taken its toll.

Amnesia, that’s the word I was trying to remember.

It’s not amnesia, I know that much at least. But really! My hairbrush on the garden bin. What is that? I’ve always been a wee bit absent minded, all my life as I recall but this, whatever ‘this’ is, is not about being absent minded, it’s more about an absent mind. When my glorious wife Mac and I get into the car these days she will often ask, “Testicles, spectacles, wallet and phone?“. I take no offense. I’d rather be asked than realize later that I had left one of them behind. It’s kind of our inside joke. Of course there’s always one of those things that I never forget, from which I have always taken considerable comfort. Fact is these days, it’s an otherwise essential checklist.

Not so long ago I was driving our Subaru Outback on the highway near Nanaimo. Clipping along at a good pace as well. I always put my car keys in the middle console when I’m driving.

“Honey, where are the car keys?”

There’s that ‘honey’ again. She is so nice.

Mac had noticed they weren’t in the console.

“They must be here. The car won’t start without them.” I said, a little peeved perhaps that I didn’t know where they were.

And then at that very moment, we heard the unmistakeable sound of a set of keys rattling their way down my rooftop and off the back of the car. What kind of cruel trick is being played upon me now. We couldn’t turn off or stop the car for several kilometres and were by that time certain we had lost the keys forever. It was one of those moments between us where silence, complete silence says so much more than any spoken words could do, whispered or shouted.

Well the God’s of All That is Good had intervened. We both got out of the car of course and when we came to the back window there were my keys, in the safe embrace of the rear window, window wiper. All of which avoids the obvious question.

“What the heck Tony?! Did you leave your keys on the roof of the car?“

That of course is a rhetorical question arriving with the answer and criticism all wrapped up into one. A rare example of grammatical efficiency.

It is simply the strangest thing, getting older.

One day you’re young. Next day, “Oh look honey, it’s a tufted titmouse at the feeder?”

And the fact is, I don’t know if I can get used to it. And I’m running out of time, if you know what I’m saying. A friend of mine recently gave me some advice about this whole ageing thing.

“Tony, it takes about ten years for you to get used to how old you are.”

Oh, forget it!