Age plays mean on the mind. It makes me more forgetful and scatter-brained. I’ve lost the use of the area of the brain that remembers where the hell I left stuff, like my truck keys, my phone, my wallet and my way home.

It’s a three-fold problem.

First fold: I forget where I put things, because my mind doesn’t pay attention to what I’m doing and make a note of it.

Second fold: Ummm. . . it’s when I . . . ummm . . . what was it I was writing about?

Third fold: What’s with all the “folds,” anyway? Weird.

My typical keys search begins under the couch cushions, a black hole that sucks keys, TV remotes and potato chips deep into its bowels. I hate sticking my arm down into the “crevice of crap” where the couch back meets and seat. If you’ve seen photos or videos of veterinarians sticking a gloved hand and arm into the bung hole of a dairy cow, you know how I feel when I do a couch rectal exam, worrying what disgusting thing I might grab hold of. Ewwww!

After the couch search, I check counter tops, dresser top, the key slit in the door lock, the driveway and sidewalk and the interior of my truck, coat pockets, pants pockets and sometimes Hot Pockets. You never know.

If that fails, I get desperate and look in places, where I know 100 percent, that I won’t find the keys, but I look just in case, because I really don’t know what else to do, right now and I’m already late for my appointment! Thus, I search the fridge, freezer, bathtub, the junk drawer and anywhere else where I loiter about.

If that fails, I enter the “WTF phase?” where I do a second search of the places I already searched, thinking that the keys may have somehow crossed the space-time wormhole continuum and reappeared under the cushions. 

I do this, because I once patted down all the pockets of the pants I was wearing, and no keys. I was sure of it. But 10 minutes later, when I searched those pockets a second time, out of desperation, they mysteriously appeared in one of those pockets.

As I run out of places to look, I reassure myself by saying things like “They gotta be somewhere.” “As soon as I find them, I’m going to get them copied (Yeah, right). “Maybe the dog ate them.” 

As my search continues, I grow more frantic, until my wife notices. That’s trouble. 

“What did you lose this time?” she asks.

“Nothing,” I lie reply as I attempt to slink out of the room.

“You lost your keys again, didn’t you? I told you to put them on the key rack by the back door, but you wouldn’t listen.”

She is correct, but because I’m immature, I don’t acknowledge it. Instead, I start a pathetic whine hoping she take pity and help me.

“I’ve looked everywhere,” I plead, almost in tears.

“No, you didn’t, or you would have found them, wouldn’t you?” she matter-of-factly replies.

(Damn it! She’s right again.) 

She then asks the obligatory question that every key searcher has been asked throughout history: “Where was the last place you had them? 

“If I knew that I’d have them, now, wouldn’t I?” I wanted to retort but think better of it. 

If the two of us, can’t find them, I go into the “knees phase,” and pray for dear life.

“God, I know I don’t always obey or know all of the Ten Commandments, but if you help me find my keys, this one time, I promise to go to church every Sunday. Plus, I can’t drive to church if I don’t have my keys.”

He sees through my thinly veiled ruse, and I get no divine assistance. But I do get another red check mark on my soul’s permanent record.

Eventually I give up and realize they are gone forever, so I do what I must do.

I buy a new truck.

I lose my cell phone more than my keys. The remedy: Ask my wife to call my cell so I can find it when it buzzes. 

“Shhhh. Listen,” I say to my wife, as I put my finger to my lips while we stand in the living room straining our four ears for that tell-tale “buzzzz” vibration.

“I hear it,” I shout. “It’s upstairs.” I bound up the stairs and begin the childhood of game of “You’re getting warmer, you’re getting colder.” 

The warmth leads me to my bedroom and toward the bed. I’m getting warmer, almost upon it, when the buzzing stops

“Damn it! Dial it again,” I shout down to my wife.

By now I’m tilting my head, like our dog listening for the can opener, the buzzing resumes and I follow its trail that leads beneath a pillow, where it fell out of my pocket, while I was reading.

Lost keys are a hassle, but a lost wallet is a calamity. “Do I cancel my credit cards or wait, because I know I’m going to find it as soon as I cancel the cards?”

I try to recall everything in the wallet that will need replacing: license, library card, health insurance card, vaccination card (thanks COVID), shoppers club cards and “Oh shit! I just remembered. I have a $100 Amazon gift certificate in there! Damn it all!”

I expect these losses to mount as I age and more and parts of my brain shut down.

Hopefully, by then, it won’t matter, as I will have lost my mind.

Jim Pfiffer’s humor column is posted every Sunday on the Jim Pfiffer Facebook page, Hidden Landmarks TV Facebook page and TwinTiersLiving.com. Jim lives in Elmira with his wife, Shelley, and many pets and is a retired humor columnist with the Elmira Star-Gazette newspaper. Contact him at pfifman@gmail.com.