VegemiteGrrl's Home for the Absent-Minded

That would be a better approach than my current 'keep everything in your pockets at all times, thus carrying 2kg of crap on your hips at all times' method

haha omg, im a fucking space cadet: after riding to work one day i took the subway home carrying my bicycle helmet, walked in the door and saw the empty spot on the wall where my bike usually goes and shouted "holy shit! where's my bike??". I set up for a performance that i completely forgot i was performing in. and i have (more than once) walked about 5 blocks from the house before i realized i was supposed to be checking the mail. fucking hippie parents man. they ruined me.

dude...I so feel you on this.

I carpool with Mr Veg & usually have the car, but every now and then he'll drop me at work and take the car. Inevitably on those days I will grab my keys at lunchtime, walk all the way out to the parking lot where I usually park my car and then go 'where the fuck is my ca----oh wait I don't have the car today'.

My housemate forgot to go to one of his best mate's wedding. I think thats pretty stellar.

I lose stuff all the time - when it comes around the time for hat and scarf, I will always go through 1-2 of both before they settle in 'on the inventory' and I know to check for them on getting up from wherever I've been. And then when it is no longer time for hat and scarf, there's a few weeks of occasional panic that I've left them somewhere, fading into more existential dread that I've left something somewhere, but what?

my worst, most horrifying absent-minded moment was when I was immigrating to the States. I took a flight that had 24 hour layover in Japan, so that necessitated going through customs etc. So as I'm preparing to re-embark on my journey after the layover, I've gone through the security check where they've x-rayed my carry on luggage etc etc and I'm now standing in line at customs, holding my passport and boarding pass waiting to get my passport stamped.

As I'm standing in line I see a Japanese airport guard walking along the length of the room, holding up a black satchel. He's not saying anything, just displaying it, walking back and forth along the lenght of the room. He walks by again and this time I notice the bag and think, huh that's a similar bag to mine. I look down, and realize that I AM NOT WEARING MY CARRYON BAG IE BLACK SATCHEL HOLY FUCK THAT'S MINE and I bolt after the guard to meekly reclaim my important possessions. ie wallet money, phone, everything I own.

I still get a wave of nausea thinking about that.

Needless to say I'm ridiculously ocd about my belongings when I travel now

ACE thread

on sunday I spent fully 15 minutes looking for the keys that were in my back pocket

oh and the thing where I'll be looking for 'er indoors in a shopping centre/street and repeatedly not see her standing right in front of me (this happens weekly)

your bag story is terrifying btw, the worst possible thing to lose at the worst possible time

oh and yesterday I put a bottle of olive oil in a calico bag and realised 10 minutes later that I hadn't put the lid back on

i don't know why but my most advanced displays of absent-mindedness involved bathtubs. I once switched on the tap to start myself a bath. While waiting for the tub to fill up I started doing other things and then decided I needed to do my grocery shopping. which took me about a half hour. I came back to a well-flooded apartment and some very angry neighbors. Another time, same thing, tub filling up and I start watching a movie. After a while I realised that the sound of water flowing that I was hearing did not come from the movie but from my bathroom where luckily the tub had only just a bit overflowed. And for some absent-mindedness that did not involve tubs, there's the day I went outside my flat to throw away the garbage. The door to my flat shut behind me. I then noticed I didn't have my keys. So I start knocking on the door hoping my flatmate hears me. Then after 10mns I remember that he's not home. So I go knock at our neighbor's place to see if I can hang out with him until my flatmate returns. Neighbor wasn't there so I spent 1 hour waiting outside my apartment only to see my flatmate return and open the door without a key. That's when I remembered that unless you used your key, the door isn't locked.

oh god your airport story VG

once when i was coming back from atlanta, i went through customs as normal, including taking my laptop out of my hand luggage for the scanner as is standard. got out the other end, got my stuff together, took the little train thing from customs to the terminals, settled down in the lounge and decided i had time to go on the internet and OMG WHERE IS LAPTOP. i'd just walked off from customs without it!!!! luckily i had enough time to take the train back, endure the mocking laughter of the officials as i reclaimed it etc.

yesterday i popped out to the shops, halfway down road realised i'd forgotten my wallet, duh. nothing new here. got home, decided to change my coat as well cuz it wasn't as cold as i thought it would be, left house again, got to the shop and realised i had STILL FORGOTTEN MY WALLET. goddddddddddd

the whereabouts of my keys are also a permanent mystery to me - even though i actually HAVE a designated place i always put the fucking things all the time in order to prevent scenarios like, eg, having to cancel social engagements because i can't find my keys anywhere (this happens on a regular basis).

My daughter, who's now 22, still remembers the trauma of us heading out to something important when she was about 7 and we were seriously delayed by my inability to locate my keys.

To this day, whenever I'm looking for something, she suggests 'the vegetable rack'

oh man just remembered one from when i was a kid (around 8-9). I had football practice with my brother. once it was over, i walk back to school talking with a friend (that's a 15minute walk). when i arrive at school you're supposed to register upon arrival so i give me and my brother's name. the guy looks at me strangely and i don't understand why. then he asks me where my brother, whom i'm registering, is. he was by the football field patiently waiting for me to take him to school.

I left my passport by the sink in the airport toilets once. Got back to the gate where the plane was about to leave and realised and ran back to the toilets in a panic not even knowing if I'd had it when I went there. Luckily it was still there and the plane hadn't gone yet. If someone had nicked it, or even helpfully handed it in at some kind of central desk far away from my gate...

(I have hated airports since the time I missed my plane because the queue for the security scan was going really slowly, and there are no clocks or flight announcements in the security area so I didn't know my flight was being called, and anyway there were no staff around to ask to be let through faster. You don't get a refund for that, the staff just look at you like you're a moron and then you have to go and pay for a new flight. I still feel it was not quite my fault, but uh, I could have been checking the time more instead of just standing where I was told and assuming that since I hadn't heard my name on the completely silent tannoy it was all fine)

xps I can't have a leather wallet like a grownup, I need one of those canvas skater type ones cos leather wallets don't have anything to attach one's keys onto and whenever they get seperated I lock myself out of places at basically the first opportunity

I have actually done the thing that you're really not supposed to be able to do any more - due to poor ticket checking on the part of the steward, got on the wrong plane and only realised when there was fortunately someone already in 'my' seat.

I've just this evening missed a flight to my parents place because I completely blanked on the concept that I was travelling to the airport in peak hour traffic, and didnt factor that in to my timing :( Fuckin.

I feel like a complete dickhead. Luckily they allowed me to move to the first thing tomorrow morming flight for only a small extra fee.

Ive never missed a plane in my life, I'm always meticilously early to airports, so I am really mad at myself.

far out :(

Put an electric kettle on the hob over christmas. Haven't had a hob kettle for about 5 years.

has anyone else ever...forgotten to put their shoes on when leaving the house?

couple of years ago i was actually on the tube, one stop away from my house, when i realised i was still wearing my slippers. never felt so self-conscious as when i had to go back and shuffle home to put my shoes on :(

The only thing that has stopped me from leaving the house without shoes is my husband asking why I was going to work without them.

xxpost aw Trayce that suuucks :(

re slippers to work: I've come as close as getting in the car with my slippers on before realizing

I bike to work and pack my clothes in a bag each night before. Cannot tell you the number of times I've forgotten socks, belt, underwear . . .

I still get a wave of nausea thinking about that.

― Peppermint Patty Hearst (VegemiteGrrl)

Sisters, truly! I put all my stuff down to go through the xray machines etc at the Toronto airport when I flew to London at 17 for summer break. I collected my stuff, put my headphones back on (I was travelling alone) and walked the 45 ridiculous minutes to the lounge for my flight. Sat down near a cute boy, took my headphones off to ask him some BS question to break the ice (I was a teenage playa) and then heard 'Alexis FFM, please report to security..' at which point I realized I'd left my passport with them. Had to run back and then back to the lounge, made the plane within a few minutes, felt like I was going to die (and that maybe I shouldn't go to London by myself!)

re: keys and habit, i've locked myself out so many times that my keys are now attached to my bag with a lanyard. i'm constantly checking that they're there...but haven't lost my keys/locked myself out since!

my friend left her passport in an airport bathroom once, and it wasn't there when she went back to get it. (which she only realized she didn't have because we were boarding) and as she was running around panicking, this cleaning lady came up and started lecturing her in chinese (we were in beijing) and gave her her passport, thank god.

also i don't know if this is an age thing, but i'm constantly losing my train of thought in the middle of sentences. makes me feel really dumb. ahh!

Wasn't there a study that found door amnesia? doorway amnesia? to be a thing? I think it it basically said that the human memory is kind of like a computer where you have memories on the hard disk but some are stored in a kind of virtual memory and when we walk through a doorway we drop the virtual memories to make room for storing information from the new environment.

Sunny speaks truth. Now it's time for her to share some of her stories.

Anyway I think they made some people look at stuff on a table then walk through a door then another back into the room and remember how stuff was placed or gave them a task to do and they just forgot opposed to the peeps who didn't walk through doors. Anyway, it seemed like a lot of shite but id still like to blame my forgetfullness on lame human make up.

we'd be here for a week xp

btw did you get that cord to your co-worker?

No. Years from now, they'll find that box with all my electrical stuff and think "Boy, he sure liked cords."

Here are a few of mine:

• Left bass guitar and Ampeg amplifier in back of pick-up while grocery shopping.

• Walked down the path to my house from the driveway after being out and seeing my cats looking at me through the screen door.

• Lots of groggy waking-up, rubbing eyes, brushing teeth, taking a shower, drying off and finally looking at the clock that says 2:26 AM.

And I've got a buddy visiting in San Francisco right now who texted me last night saying he was about to go to the airport. He was correct in booking the flight home for 12:30 Friday. He just neglected to tell the airline that he preferred PM, not AM.

i once left a piece of jack kirby original artwork on a train - and recovered it from lost property!

also i don't know if this is an age thing, but i'm constantly losing my train of thought in the middle of sentences. makes me feel really dumb. ahh!

sometimes i think that i'm not actually going to be able to tell if/when i do go senile. how would i know the difference?

xp lol i have booked a train ticket for 5.30am rather than 5.30pm before. i wondered why it was oddly cheap ;_;

• Left bass guitar and Ampeg amplifier in back of pick-up while grocery shopping.

;_;

Having had instruments stolen from locked vehicles twice, this one just makes me cringe.

The look on my face when I came out with the groceries and there was my rig must have been quite priceless.

sometimes i think that i'm not actually going to be able to tell if/when i do go senile. how would i know the difference?

I've actually asked a doctor this.

Part of the treatment for some Alzheimer's patients is to furnish their domicile with things that are familiar to them. So a man's kitchen might have an old oven and old refrigerator with the pull-down handle. Maybe an old analog radio with the needle on the dial.

I think about spending my 2040s in a room with a Playstation 2 and a turntable, and get very peaceful about the whole aging process.

I belong here.

When I was in high school I worked at a small supermarket, and one of my crap jobs on weekends was to peel potatoes in the deli when we weren't busy at the checkouts. One shift I was peeling away, got called to the checkout to help, and returned about 40 minutes later to find two angry produce boys mopping up a giant flood, created by me leaving the tap running. The entire deli was flooded. Thank GOD it was a Sunday and both the bosses were out, I would definitely have been fired.

I left my engagement ring on the sink in our apartment and went to work, twice. Oh god the incredible panic I felt at realizing it wasn't on my finger nor anywhere in sight. I looked everywhere, completely freaked out, held back tears and called my then-fiance, who thankfully was home both times to confirm it was safe in the bathroom.

I lost a lovely expensive watch that my mother gave me. So she bought me another one, exactly the same. Which I then lost. Guilt was huge on that one.

Been waiting a coupla years to tell this story on ILX...OK so I'm at the grocery because I'm craving Heinz pork-and-beans, and I'm frustrated 'cause on the shelf there's 20 red-labeled cans (meaning beans in molasses sauce, which I don't want) and not a single blue label (tomato sauce, my preference.) So I look closer and way at the back is a single blue can - yay! - so I grab it and then read haricots blancs à la sauce tomate (lol Canada) and I think "aw shit, one can left and it's French!"

It takes me a few seconds to register: "Idiot, just turn the can around and you can read the English side of the label."

It takes a FURTHER few seconds to realize, more to the point, that I'm buying the BEANS, not the label.

My stupidest one is probably when I borrowed a friends car to drive to a gig in Glasgow at the Barrowlands, I don't know Glasgow super well but I gather it's not in the most salubrious part of town. Parked the car on a busy road and walked the half mile to the venue, stopping in at a chip shop on the way. Went in and walked through the recently installed metal detectors. Hmm I thought, curious they didn't beep, what with my car keys in my pocket... oooooooohhhh shiiiiiiittttt. Ran back to the car, checking I hadn't left them in the chippy on the way. There they were, still in the driver's door. Was probably slightly lucky in that I'd parked with the door on the road side, not the kerb side.

Later on in the year I crashed his car into a roundabout in the early hours of the morning. Good times!

Hah, got a new iPhone (because I lost the old one, of course) last week, and got a delivery slot of 6-10pm. Came home in a hurry, busied myself writing my magnum opus playing Batman: Arkham City, and then the delivery man knocked on the door and gave me my iPhone... and a pitying look as he indicated my keys still in the door.

My wife and I have gone out to dinner and left the front door to our house wide open at least once.

left the keys in a locked car with the engine runnning on more than one occasion

Also, MVB's story reminds me of Homer Simpsons' "Oh, there's only one can of beer left, and it's Bart's!"

I was commuting to work and had like 3 bags, and my iphone was in my lap. The train stops at times square and I stand up to get out with everyone else. Somehow because of the angle and because I was sitting right next to the doors, I didn't realize that my phone was not in my pocket until I saw it slide neatly into the gap between the train and the platform edge. Everyone around me gave me these expressions of 'oh shit, that sucks.' I was already late for work but I had to stay there and wait for the train to leave (which took a while, since it was the last stop). Luckily after it left, an MTA employee was already down on the tracks and he picked it up and gave it to me. Now I compulsively grab my phone every time I enter or exit the train.

Was thinking some more about this stuff and it has become so much more awful and panic-inducing since having a kid. I know myself well enough to know I need to CONSCIOUSLY THINK about doing the buckles up in the car seat, for instance, otherwise I will just forget. Add the very real phenomenon of baby brain into the mix, and I am a nervous wreck a lot of the time, trying to avoid leaving my child behind in a car park or watching as he swallows the bottle of medicine from the cupboard I forgot to close.

the first year we moved into our house I was TERRIBLE for leaving my keys in the front door. not cool even under normal circumstances, even more so since we were on the edge of sketchy neighborhood and occasionally would find bums plonking themselves down on our front porch for the evening.

like there were times when I'd open the front door in the morning and find the keys still in the front door from the night before.

I don't believe in guardian angels but I feel like the universe is expending an awful lot of energy to protect me from myself.

I've gotten into the habit of whispering "stove on, stove on" till I return, just to make sure I don't burn the house down

Sometimes I sing "I am locking the door, I am locking the door" in a really silly voice to myself when I leave the house, to stop myself from coming back five minutes later to double-check that I locked the door. The idea is, I am more likely to remember something embarassing than just locking the door like usual.

I don't know why I do this - I've never ever left the house with the door open!

I do this too, and make a point of trying to open the door before I leave to implant that memory in my mind. Usually I do this only when leaving on a trip, because just before leaving I am in and out, sometimes not even shutting the door so I also remember walking out with the door open.

If I remember something essential under the shower, I then chant it to myself until I get out of there.

I slept very poorly for a couple nights in a row back in January, when it was still really dreary and dark out. I could not for the life of me remember the name of a thing: fire hydrant

I was like, uh, fireplug, the thing the fire department uses by the curb to get the water

Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind because I can’t remember Jason Segel’s name, but that’s probably okay

Actors are a tricky one. I can recall all kinds of movie ephemera, who directed or even who the DP was on some movies, but there are certain actors that I'm seemingly incapable of naming

i called corvids 'covids' the other day

I slept very poorly for a couple nights in a row back in January, when it was still really dreary and dark out. I could not for the life of me remember the name of a thing: fire hydrant

I go through this occasionally. Worried about letting my teammate down on "Password".

got premade chicken salad and some tasty bread, was looking forward to chicken salad sandwich for lunch. only to get home and realize i'd bought chicken PASTA salad, and there was like ... maybe 2 pieces of chicken in there :(

as of two days ago I've forgotten how to fix one of the final permute-edges patterns on my rubik cube. I've done it hundreds of times before but am now just drawing a blank. the odd thing is that i have done it a couple of times without thinking, but when i try and think it's just not there.

X A X
A X B
X B X

this one

M2 U M2 U M' U2 M2 U2 M' U2 apparently

I hate it when brains do that! I have certain strings of numbers completely solidly memorised for good reason (eg PINs and such), and yet on a rare occasion my brain will go HAHAHAHAAAA NOT TODAY SATAN while I'm trying to buy $100 of groceries and completely blanked on the PIN I use all the fucking time.

that pattern, i realised, isn't the one i used to use but it's better so i might start. the two other patterns on the same link i found for permuting the last edges were also better so i might start using those too. requires some learning, and some unlearning, though

This really belongs on a general klutz-related thread, but there isn't one; thought also of the worst-part-of-getting-old thread, but I'll put it here instead.

At a Friends of the Library meeting tonight, I spilled a just-brewed Keurig cup of coffee on my right hand. Much commotion: while others cleaned up my mess, I stood there, as directed, with my hand under very cold running water. That was so uncomfortable, I next knocked the cell phone out of Barb's hand as I shook my own.

One woman had me scared half to death: blistering, excruciating pain tonight, etc. Two hours later, it seems fine--I think I was probably saved by Keurig's inability to brew a truly hot cup of coffee.

Not absent-mindedness, but except for when I'm sleeping*, I am an accident-waiting-to-happen every minute of the day. *(Until the day I fall out of bed in the middle of the night, that is.)

I should have posted here: Clumsiness

work badge on lanyard, i had swung it behind my shoulder while eating, reservoir dogs style. reached down to pick something up off the floor and get hit right in the eye by edge of swinging badge.

I think I may have stumbled onto a whole new ad campaign for Keurig: "Hot enought to drink, safe enough to spill."

One woman had me scared half to death: blistering, excruciating pain tonight, etc.

that's McDonalds lawsuit coffee. normal coffee is not nearly that hot!

That was the difference for sure. Also learned that, if this does happen, you're supposed to run cool/lukewarm water over your hand, not (what I did) ice-cold water...Anyway, hand is 100% intact, functioning, and cosmetically sound today.

I was looking out of the corner of my eye and picked up a soldering iron by the wrong end in middle school, but let go pretty quickly. It must have shocked the nerves enough that it didn't actually hurt for several minutes. I'd also overcompensated and ran to the freezer and was icing my fingers, but stopped after a moment when I realized it didn't hurt.

Thankfully I had all the healing capabilities of a 13 year old and all was fine in a couple days

HAPPY BIRTHDAY M8

:D thx mookie!

heading over to the 50 thread - crested the half century milestone wee ugh

At school dropoff, I took my daughter's bag, with a unicorn raincoat, a bag of rice cakes, and a Hello Kitty water bottle. She took my bag, with my house keys, reading glasses, and a 1980s paperback of Dune.

Quick summary: changed to summer tires on Monday; Tuesday night at the tennis courts, someone noticed my front passenger tire was flat; temporarily pumped it up, drove it over to the mechanic about 5 km away and someone gave me a ride home; checked in the next morning and they fixed it.

Once I got home (another 4-5 km), I took a look back at the car before entering my house. My tennis racket was sitting on the front hood, passenger side. I must have set it down there Tuesday night, and it stayed in place for 10 km of driving to the auto shop and home.

"How slow do you drive?" someone asked me when I related the story. (Also belongs on the "You Know You're Getting Old When..." thread.)