I have done that too… as well as using my car keyfob on the badge reader at work instead of swiping my badge.
Is your name Fred? (go to 1:23)
I’ve done this too. I’ve also frantically looked for my “missing” red hatchback only to (finally!) remember that I brought the white van that day instead.
Oh yeah-- I do that all the time when I swap vehicles with my wife because she needs the Jeep to transport something large, or whatever.
My mother used to do that a lot.
A couple of years ago I was in Panama Beach, Florida for my son’s wedding. I met my son and a bunch of his buddies at a bar/restaurant for lunch and drinks one day. My rental car was parked not far from the restaurant.
After lunch everyone split up to do whatever they needed to do. I needed to get some oysters and beers. Some while later I went to find my car but couldn’t. It was 98 degrees and 98% humidity and I was walking up and down rows of parked cars. After about an hour of frantic searching I was ready to call the police to report my car stolen. However, all the paperwork was in the car’s glove-box.
I had retraced my steps repeatedly. Then the thought hit me that the other side of the lot was a mirror image of the side I was on. I walked over to the opposite side and found my car. 
Exiting my car after arriving at work, I reach into the center console binnacle to grab my ID pouch and my wallet…and find my wallet isn’t there. That terrifying feeling like a knife in the abdomen. Wait! Maybe it’s on the passenger seat, or fell between the seat and the console! No.
Entering the facility where I work, I see the supervisor and say I must go home and get my wallet, and that I’ll be back in less than an hour. On the way home making damn well sure I do nothing to get pulled over and have to present a driver’s license I don’t have, plus the anxiety of “where the hell is that damn thing?”.
Finally there: I dash into the house and expect to see my wallet resting on it’s usual kitchen/living room pass-through counter. Not there. Now that knife in the chest feels like it’s 80 degrees below zero…yet I break out into a sweat. I’m literally pacing in circles as my mind frantically races. "Fer chrissake, what I do as I left for work?
Let’s see…yes. I grabbed some outgoing envelopes to put in my mailbox at the curb. Could it be? Normally it’s my wallet in hand as I get into the car and back out of the garage. I fly out the door, down the driveway and as I approach the mailbox I see the little red flag is still raised. Opened the door to find my wallet sitting atop my outgoing mail. The sense of relief was like a million bucks. The sense of my stupidity in getting tripped up was like a kick in the ass I couldn’t give myself.
That’s what happens when routines get interrupted.
I have a cute little French press coffee maker from Ikea that makes one mug at a time. Just yesterday I poured some water into the electric kettle and flicked it on. While it was heating I rinsed and wiped out the press, rinsed and wiped out a mug, then started measuring the ground coffee into the mug.
I got to two out of four spoonfuls before I realized what I was doing. Since the mug was damp the grounds wouldn’t just pour out again. I wound up running enough more water from the tap into the mug to make a slurry, swirling it around a couple times, dumping it into the press real quick then adding the final two spoons to the press.
After the press was charged I got rid of the clinging grounds still in the mug with more tap water.
Then, on a separate occasion, I walked into the laundry room and lifted the lid on our top-loading washer when I needed to pee. Fortunately I wasn’t tall enough to make that work.
- Walking into a room like a man on a mission, only to realize I don’t remember what the mission is.
- Wandering the parking lot looking for my car for 5 minutes before remembering I took the wife’s car that day.
- Quickly going to google something but forgetting what it was I wanted to google.
- Forgetting if I’d just used the toilet’s bidet function or not, as I contemplate rising up off the commode. Well, better run it again . . .
Yep. I once took a car trip to Minnesota without my wallet (plenty of other drivers). I always (and now always-always) grab my keys and my wallet together from their storage location. This time I was loading the car, so I grabbed by keys to pop the trunk. Loaded the car, loaded the people, off we go.
Need fuel and food in Iowa, reach for my wallet to get the CC - no wallet. Much talk of senility from my sons and wife, picked up by the siblings when we got to MN. And as a bonus, one resturaunt really wasn’t going to let me have a beer without an ID. They did relent eventually.
Yeah, wallet and keys together at said storage location for sure. to leave, I have the routine down to: Keys in front right pocket ( out of pocket and right back in just to lock house door ) and key fob operates vehicle while still in pocket. I never sit while my wallet is in the pack pants pocket, so I often hold onto it then put it right into vehicle console binnacle.
Let, anything, anything interfere with me while I’m holding my wallet on my way out to me car and I’m afraid I’m going to mindlessly, subconsciously, set it down somewhere, only to remember I did so when it’s too late.
Back when I was a gas station attendant, the station was close to a grocery store and strip mall I remember so often cars would pull up to the pumps and I’d see items still on the roofs of cars. I’d point this out to the motorist, much to their amazement and a shared laughs. It was always due to them having their hands full, their minds full of other things, and hurried-ness.
I’m still amazed a Carvell ice cream cake could stay on the roof of a car after being driven a quarter mile.
On the topic of forgetting where you parked… Back in college, finding an open parking space in the lot in front of the dorm was a rare treat. Usually the drill was: circle the lot in front of the dorm to look for a spot, then circle the lot in front of the adjacent dorm, and finally across the road to the overflow lot where there was usually plenty of parking. One day I was getting ready to go somewhere and spent about fifteen minutes wandering through various lots looking for my car. I finally found it in a spot about four down from the front door of my dorm!
In other words, it’s no good getting lucky finding a good parking spot if you can’t remember where you parked!
One Monday in 2004 I opened the garage door to get my bike to bike to work, and my car wasn’t there. For a few seconds I wondered how someone could have stolen my car without opening the garage and then I remembered driving to the town center on Friday to take the metro downtown to see a movie with my brother, who then drove me all the way home after …
Fortunately the metro parking garage was free on weekends, so I only got a parking ticket for the Monday …
Worse still are the cases (you’ve all heard the stories!) of losing your glasses, only to discover (eventually) that they’re right there on your face.
Well, welcome to the New Normal: Not only that, but losing your face mask, only to discover (eventually) that it, too, is right there on your face.
Do all the times I forget to put on a mask when I get out of the car to go into a store count? Quite often I get up to the door, see the sign about masks, and then it clicks. One time I made it into the store without a mask (fortunately it was a Best Buy and they had a greeter/watcher at the door who very politely reminded me, and then thanked me when I came back with it on).
The thing that makes this maddening to me is that I hang the mask off the inside door handle, and I still forget sometimes. It’s like I’m in another world.
My Wife used to race IronMan triathlons. On night, at the running marathon part she stepped off the path to pee in the trees. Now at this section, people where running in both directions. You had to go up to a turn around.
Yup, she got back on the trail and ran in the wrong direction. She figured it out after a bit, had to turn around. Ended up being a 141 mile race instead of 140. That must have been soul crushing when she figured it out. It was already 11pm so she was absolutely beat (the full marathon is the last leg of the race)
I’ve done that.
That’s why I wear mine on a leash around my neck
This happens way too often – I pull out of the garage, press the remote, watch the door go all the way down, head down the road a quarter mile, have to come back and check if I closed the garage.