This is a kind of a confession. I have done something twice in the past month that I have not done in the rest of my life. I find it somewhat disturbing. Perhaps talking about it will be helpful.
I left and locked my house early this morning and then started my truck and scraped the wind shield. Somewhere in this process, I cannot figure out where, I also locked my truck. I was standing in sub-zero weather locked out of my running truck and locked out of my house. The first time I did this my wife was driving down the street. She eventually came home. This time she is in Minneapolis and eventually will take a while longer.
I had such a great day planned. I was up early. I was headed to a coffee shop to write. My wife was not around which meant I could go to the coffee shop early and not deal with our different opinions regarding rising early on the weekend.
My office is within walking distance (my gloves are in the car) and I must carry two sets of keys which means I have a key to my office so I am now stuck in my office until my wife gets home this evening.
I wonder if this is an aging thing. If it is, it is going to become very inconvenient. Knowing something about the biological decline of aging I am trying to figure this out. Older people think more slowly. The one advantage we have is experience. Some people call this wisdom.
I know that locking yourself out of the house and car does not sound that wise. However, here is how I am going to spin it. Older people have an advantage when situations are complex and they can use past experience to match new situations. There is this kind of pattern recognition that allows us to act in what others perceive as an intelligent fashion. We don’t really figure things out based on our depth of understanding, we just remember what we did when we encountered a similar situation before. However, there appears to be a slight flaw in my pattern – I seem to be locking the door before I get in the vehicle and not afterwards.