Moments of Silver/Senior Mishaps

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So, hi. Locrian here. Been around. Happily wake up everyday to the BBQ Pit…

I’m 55 (and 9 months, if that matters). So I don’t consider myself to be old, necessarily, but definitely distracted enough where I make some completely dopey mistakes. Here are a recent couple:

One: Playing bar trivia in a low-lit bar. Our bartender offers me and my team some miniature Reese’s PB cups.

Now, I don’t know how many of these little treats I’ve had in my life— probably eight or nine thousand??!? So I clearly know how to unwrap one.

I take off the golden wrap. Look at trivia question. Look down at gold unwrapped PB cup.

I think, “Ooooh! Must be one of the dark chocolate kind!” So I eat it… WITH THE DARK WRAPPER STILL ATTACHED!

So, certainly not the dark chocolate kind. Cough, cough, spit into napkin, cough, cough. That wax wrapper tastes effing horrible, BTW.

NEXT is me going to bar on Ventura Bl to watch a baseball playoff game. Finally find a space, BUT… cash only. Something’s jammed in the card slot. Can’t do cards. So I frantically get change for meter at restaurant.

I go outside, run, actually, while searching for approaching parking ticket givers.

I see none approaching. Run up to meter. Deposit first quarter, second quarter, third quarter. I stop and look down the street. My freaking car is FOUR SPACES AWAY!! So some lucky a-wipe got lucky that day. Had to get more change.

Third: I pick up my prescription at Walgreens. Done this for years, decades, at the same location down the street.

For typical discount, I’m asked for my phone number. So… that’s 818…

Uhhhh, well, I don’t call myself that freaking often, so of course I have to consult the phone, searching for my own phone number. :roll_eyes:

And finally, just today, I find out Godzilla Minus One is being re-released! One of my all-time faves. Never saw it in theater, only online.

I buy ticket. Get to theater. My ticket is for NOVEMBER 5TH! Because I don’t read, evidently. Like buying cheese poofs that are spicy and not regular, or peanut butter that’s chunky, not smooth.

So if you all have any stories similar to these, please share.

2

These are great stories though perhaps not necessarily age-related. I mean my little mishaps have always happened when I’ve been distracted by cluster-f stressors.

Here’s one from my job as a Job Coach. I’m substituting in a dish room, talking to my clients with development disabilities. I’m talking to the three dish-washers.

Two strange employee ask me about proper methods. The employees carefully listens to me for six hours and follows through. Six hours later, I learn that they’re actually not my clients. I’ve been talking to these people so smoothly that they’ve been following my directions. It’s a good thing I’m not a sociopath or had bad motives.

3

Just you wait, Sonny!
:man_in_motorized_wheelchair: :man_with_white_cane:

IME (just turned 68) the Dope causes this. Always thinking about something to say there, or something you read, rather than whatever it is you’re actually doing at the moment. Like finding your parking meter or buying the right PB.

I think this is a bit like how the world was when we were 4 or 6 or whatever. It’s hard to stay focused on your foreground task long enough to complete it. Meanwhile there are so many other fun things to pay attention to or think about.

My recent trick has been spilling things. I make a nice cup of coffee, and while walking back to my chair I essentially forget I’m carrying it. So my grip loosens, the cup tips, and coffee sloshes out. We’ve all watched little kids obliviously carrying a cup at an increasingly precarious angle and sure enough, eventually it tips far enough to spill. At which point they’re surprised to re-discover they’re carrying a cup at all.

In my case it’s not really that I forgot in the knowledge / memory sense. It was that I neglected to keep the fact of the carrying in my active working list of tasks in progress. That juggled ball just dropped away silently and unnoticed. Until my bare feet get wet.


I’ll also say, like @Eric1, that at least some of these brain farts have happened to me ever since I can remember. Teen me, 20 yo me, 40 yo me all pulled these dumb moves. Occasionally. The wrong date reservation, the wrong grocery store item, the wrong parking meter. Back before electronic fobs, ever stick your car key in somebody else’s car door? Everybody raise their hands :slight_smile:

What might be different now is the frequency. Might.

4

Tonight, I needed coffee, bread, and juice from the supermarket.

Easy enough; no list necessary. I got the bread and juice—and completely blanked on the coffee. What the hell am I missing? Pickles? Got some, just in case. Potato salad from the deli? Got some, just in case. But what the hell else? Damned if I can remember.

I get home, and find that my pantry is well-stocked with pickles, and the fridge is well-stocked with potato salad. Coffee! The penny dropped. Well, I can pick up some tomorrow, no big deal, and I’ve got enough for tomorrow morning, but for me to forget coffee—well, that’s definitely a senior moment, given how much I drink of it.

From here on in, I’ll make a list, and not rely so much on memory.

5

Yep. Everything goes on the list and nothing is bought unless on the list. The alternative is no coffee and a 3 year supply of PB.

Which brings up another form of my mental failures. I can remember that I have a problem a lot better than I can remember I already solved it. The recollection that I need PB, with no particular date attached to it, seems eternal. The recollection that I bought some 3 days ago when last at the store just doesn’t stick without some conscious effort.

6

I’ve got a million of 'em, but this is my favorite:

Back when I was working, I wanted to listen to my own outgoing voicemail message (I was soon to be going on vacation and I wanted to make sure my out-of-office message was there).

So, I dialed my desk number from my cell phone, listened to my message, and hung up.

Not five seconds later I noticed a blinking light on my desk phone indicating that I had a message.

“I wonder who called?” I thought to myself.

mmm

7

I can’t remember any! :sob:

8

Hey, paper is organic in nature, so you can technically call it “food” rather than “a mistake”. LOL

Yeah, and thanks! That was my car! :smiling_face_with_horns:

9

My SiL had an event about an hour or so away from her but only 40 minutes away from me. I told her to drive to my place, and I would drive us up there. We arrived at an empty parking lot and a silent building. Turns out that she had the right place at the right time, but we were a week early! LOL

10

Where are my glasses? I can’t find them without my glasses. Can’t find my extra pair to find my regular glasses. Last resort, my garbage drawer with old prescription glasses. Work my way back up the trail, 15 - 20 minutes burned. Could have asked my wife who’d pointed them out in 10 seconds. Nooo, too important not to show weakness. Sigh!

11

A little while back I drove somewhere that was a couple hours away from my house. It was some sort of errand to get or do something, but I no longer remember what (maybe that’s a senior mishap in itself).

After I obtained or completed whatever I went there for, I had gotten a bit mixed around and didn’t remember the exact way I came (woah, another senior moment? Nah, my sense of direction has never been great).

So I put my address into Apple Maps— street number and name, and I clicked on the first choice that popped up without examining it too closely. I assumed it would default to my house, right? You can probably see where this is going.

I drove for an embarrassingly long time, maybe 40 minutes, before I started to realize something was wrong. Pull over, double-check address, and yes…it’s for a house with the same street name and number in a different city, and I had been driving in the complete opposite direction I needed to go.

12

Wait, why did I open this thread…

13

same thread, 5 years from now:

… and I stopped drinking coffee last year…

.

THEN…, my friend you are in real troubles …

14

Recently tried to use my car key fob to open my apartment door. Doesn’t work. Bonus points for doing this while chatting with a neighbor, so she got to witness that blunder. Oh well, nice young woman and I was laughing harder than she was. Can’t count the number of times I’ve tried to use the door key on the mailbox, or the mailbox key on the door, or tried to use the wrong car key fob for the car I’m attempting to open (and they’re not even the same shape!).

15

I had a couple ‘senior mishap’ moments just today. First one:

I’m sitting on my couch this morning when I think “where’s my phone? Oh yeah, it’s in the bedroom charging”.

So I go to the bedroom to get it, and while I’m in there I think “might as well get ready to go out while I’m in here” since I was going to run a couple errands. I change out of my sweats into a more presentable pair of pants, comb my hair, etc.

Then, as I’m walking to my vehicle, I think “where’s my phone?” Yep, still in the bedroom charging.

Then, at one point as I’m running my errands, I get in to start my vehicle. Now, I bought it brand new last year, and it has that feature that turns the engine off when at a stop, which I hate (there’ve been a couple SDMB threads about this very subject). So I’ve gotten in the habit of pushing the start button, then immediately pushing the “auto-stop disengage” button. Except, this time I pushed the disengage button first, as if it were the start button, and had a panicked “why won’t it start?” moment :man_facepalming:

16

I pulled a lulu of one just this morning.

I’ve been away for nearly 2 weeks, so had lots of administrivia to catch up on now I’m home. One of the top priorities was to gather up all the income checks and get them deposited at my credit union. It’s not urgent, but it would be good to have done. I was running into town today in any case to pick up prescriptions that were filled during my absence, so a stop at the bank – just a couple blocks away – was easy.

I signed all the checks, added all the account detail, totaled them all up for each account. Gathered up all my stuff for the trip to town: Purse, phone, reusable bags for groceries and yada yada.

Got two thirds of the way to town. And remembered the checks were still on the counter where I’d left them.

Next week will be soon enough. It wasn’t worth the gas to drive home again. < Derp >

17

My workplace recently (okay, < 3 years ago) switched to making all buildings card-access at all times. The list of things I have obliviously waved at a doorway ID reader in place of my workplace ID includes:

  • my credit card
  • my local bus pass
  • my library card
  • my phone
  • my driver’s license

Somewhat reassuringly, none of them have worked to actually open the door.

18

Once most hotels had gone to some variation of a card key, say post ~1995 = 30 years ago, I kept my hotel key du jour in my card case right alongside a couple credit cards.

Lotta times I tried to pay for lunch or whatever using a Hilton card key. That didn’t work either. Once in awhile I’d try to open the room door with a credit card, but paying with a key was a lot more common; just deal the top card off the deck without looking and hand it to cashier. They’re all dark blue or gray anyhow. This was mostly before tap to pay or pay-by-phone.

Back then I wasn’t old enough to be having senior moments though. Just moments. :zany_face:

19

You should look into direct deposit for this money. Another option is to use the cell phone app for your credit union and scan the checks with your cell phone.

20

I’m aware of these options, but there are reasons why I don’t do these things that are beyond my control. Thanks for the suggestions, though.