O-L-H??*

Recent emails sent to one of my contemporaries who has lost an out-of-print interlibrary exchange book!!! She asked if I thought this kind of thing was related to age....

Part 1

yesterday i had cathy's car for the a.m., so i planned to go to whole foods and buy a bunch of vegetables--the ones listed in NF Walker's wonderful old book, Diet and Salads, which is hard to come by these days but which arrived day before yesterday from one of Amazon's private booksellers. on the day before yesterday, i was sitting in our lobby so i could let a realtor in the front door. anyway, the mailman arrived and handed me the long-awaited book and half a dozen pieces of junk mail. as there was no sign of the realtor, i decided to do a last minute tidying and stuffed the junk mail into a little black plastic bag from the wine store down the hill. added a few other stray bits of litter, tied the bag up by the handles, and tossed it in the dumpster.

the next day [yesterday] when i went to get the book to see which veggies and fruits and nuts i needed to make one of Walker's delicious salads, i couldn't find it anywhere. i cursed my newly reactivated tidying habits and searched all the bookshelves. zip. then it came to me: perhaps i had tossed out the book with the junk mail. i scrambled down to the dumpster out back, saw a little black back tied at the top, and fished it out. nope. somebody's half-eaten dinners. i peered into the dumpster some more and saw some black bags at the bottom--out of my reach. so i went in and got a rake out of the rake, broom, and paint closet. with the rake, i flipped some odd junk off the bags and pulled up another little black one tied at the top.

that was it, and inside was my long-awaited book, still happily in its wrapping, which prevented the dumpster ooze from soiling it.

jaysus...that's the first time i ever accidentally threw out something i really love the day after i got it.

part 2

I'm chuckling here bout ur question "do you ever find yourself doing [these kinda] things due to age?" actually, I don't think of it as due to age. Things like tossing out the book are pains in the butt, and while I don't remember (ha) doing stuff like that often when I was MUCH younger, I did do things in my 30s--when we lived in Bismarck and all the kids were toddlers or babies--like put my purse in the fridge when I was tired and distracted.

I blame throwing out the book on the same thing: distraction. Too many irons in the fire, too many worries all at the same time. I don't think age (other than providing brand new challenges just like all the other stages of life do) figgers in there much at all. But maybe I'm in denial. Who gives a crap? Sufficient to the day are the evils thereof, or however it goes.

Part 3

Well, we do get distracted. I find that my recent passage from a highly structured day to the present lack of structure leaves me wide open to total distraction. Of a very pleasant kind most of the time, I must add. But I have done stupid things just this past week because nothing is in its accustomed place (due to the effing realtor gig). Not only did I throw out my book in my lust for tidiness, but this aft I got a call frm
Billy the plumber. The check I wrote him last week did a nice bounce cuz it was frm the wrong checkbook...the right checkbook having disappeared into some drawer or box or bag in the trunk of Cathy's car (v handy as a hidey place for stuff in emergencies) due to the same need for tidiness above all. [note...i have half a dozen checkbooks, all with identical blue plastic covers, and most of them are from my present bank]

And when I called the g-d bank, I got some fellow with an indecipherable accent who tried to explain to me how checks work. I used strong words about the lack of care banks are showing these days, and he hung up on me. I had plenty of $$ in that bank to cover th check--but it was the wrong account. And since the banks are going freaky on us, they are not inclined to indulge nonbillionaires when they make mistakes. Ah, nuts. It's not our fault that our [my friend's and my] transit into our 70s has coincided with the present economic catastrophe.

Part 4

so far, nothing more has happened that i could blame on old age. the sun came up just fine, and the guy who panhandles outside of marvelous market said his business was "slow," and he laughed when i gave him a donation and told him everything was going to hell in a handbasket, and everyone is broke.

*O-L-H is from William Steig's incomparable book, C-D-B just sound it out....