What Absent Minded Thing Have You Done Lately?

Got my wife a festive Valentines Day card that said, Happy Anniversary. We were married in June.
 
Dash man said:
Lately I’ve been misjudging the width of doorways and other passageways and running into them with my left shoulder. Gets lots of chuckles because it’s usually in a restaurant.
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I've been doing this all my life, and I blame it on either clumsiness or bad vision. Not sure which. Now that I am older, when I hit things that way I sometimes fall and falling has become a much bigger deal than it once was. So, I try to be much more careful about it.
 
I have a thumb drive on which I keep my financial spreadsheet and also my personal journal, which is a record of various musings and adventures that I don't share with just anyone. I keep the drive in our safe, but occasionally take it to work to print out an updated version of the spreadsheet. One day I lost track of it somewhere between my desk and home. I'd stopped by the restroom on the way home that day, and thought I'd left it on the TP dispenser in the stall. Immediately went back to look for it, and it wasn't there, nor was it in the lost and found. A frantic search of my car and all my pockets made me certain I'd left it in the restroom and someone had taken it.

I wasn't terribly nervous about a coworker seeing my spreadsheet, which is password protected anyways. But I was nervous about the journal! For the next few weeks, I squirmed while studying the faces of my female coworkers, wondering if they were thinking about the personal details they'd discovered, and wondering if those details were being shared around the office. Yikes! :facepalm:

Well, six months later, I pulled a plastic grocery bag out from the wad we keep for trash can liners, and inside the bag was the thumb drive! I use those bags for lunch bags, and must have been carrying my food containers home in one and dropped the drive in, too. Then I probably spaced and took out the containers but not the drive, before stuffing the bag into the wad in the pantry. That drive leaves the house no more!
 
Nemo2 said:
The scary thing about reading all these posts is that the examples appear to be so commonplace that I'm starting to feel like I'm 'normal'.......whereas, previously, it'd be "Oh Geez, did I just....?"
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I once ran into the house to get something, leaving the car running in the garage (overhead door open). DW asked me a couple of questions, I got distracted and forgot about the car....at 2 AM nice lady across the street called and asked if I was aware the garage door was open, and car was running. Oooops!

That was at age 45. Now, when I "forget" some little thing, I think back to the running car in the garage. It puts my recent "forgots" in old age in perspective.
 
I keep my shoes in my garage next to the door that leads into the house...my habit is to take off my shoes as I get out of the car after parking in my garage and then enter the house, and I reverse the process when I am leaving the house...I put on my shoes as I walk out of the house and into the garage and then get into the car to leave, or I pick up my shoes and put them in the car as I leave and put them on when I get to my destination. Once I forgot to put on my shoes when I left for work in the morning, and I realized it only when I arrived at the office, so I had to drive all the way back home to get my shoes. There was another time, years ago, I had a first date with a woman and I forgot to put on my shoes as I was leaving and I didn't realize that I was wearing socks but no shoes until I arrived at the location to meet my date.
 
The absentminded thing almost killed my sister.

She had some pills in a little bottle with a cork.

You guessed it: Instead of taking a pill and putting the cork back, she swallowed the cork and put the pill back.

Her choking came and went. She went to the ER and they used some kind of scope to find the cork and fish it out.
 
Dash man said:
Lately I’ve been misjudging the width of doorways and other passageways and running into them with my left shoulder. Gets lots of chuckles because it’s usually in a restaurant.
Click to expand...

Hence the baby-safe bumpers on our killer range hood:

XId2lQs.jpg
 
Years ago in another location, we had an outside building used for shop tools and other storage. Wife was away from home and I went into the shop for something. Late at night wife comes home After a few minutes she asks, where is the dog. I replied, thought he was with you. Did not know where he was. Net morning, go out side and hear whining in the out building. Guess where the dog has been all night?
 
This did not happen to me, but it was funny...

Years ago I was on assignment at another Megacorp location in a large city. The manager I was working with, who was a friend that I knew before the assignment began, had mentioned to me how her car had gotten stolen from the parking garage next to the office about a month ago, so be careful.

I am in her office discussing something when the phone rings, she answers it, says "Yes... yes..." listens for a bit, gets a funny look on her face, then says "Oh yeah... that was me... thank you, I'll get it today", hangs up, and immediately puts her head down on her desk and puts her hands on her head.

I'm thinking she has received some tragic news so I get very worried and start asking is every okay, do you need me to do anything, etc. Then she looks up - she is blushing and smiling and shaking her head. "I'm going to tell you this, but you better not tell anyone else until I tell them!" she says.

It turns out there are several parking garages around the office. She was running late for meetings, traffic in the city was heavy, and she decided to park in one other than the one she usually parks and rush a few blocks to the office. She ended up spending most of the day in meetings, and a few crises came up that she had to deal with. Long story short, she left the office after dark, went to the garage where she normally parks, could not find her car, completely forgot about parking it in a different garage, and reported it stolen.

The call came from the police. Security at the other parking garage noticed a car had not been moved for a month and contacted the police, who checked it out and ran her plate, found it reported stolen, and called her to let her know where they had found it.

She was quite embarrassed. The good news is that the folks in the parking garage only charged her for a day, when she explained what happened they got a good laugh and said that alone would cover the cost of the other 30 days.
 
jollystomper said:
This did not happen to me, but it was funny...

Years ago I was on assignment at another Megacorp location in a large city. The manager I was working with, who was a friend that I knew before the assignment began, had mentioned to me how her car had gotten stolen from the parking garage next to the office about a month ago, so be careful.

I am in her office discussing something when the phone rings, she answers it, says "Yes... yes..." listens for a bit, gets a funny look on her face, then says "Oh yeah... that was me... thank you, I'll get it today", hangs up, and immediately puts her head down on her desk and puts her hands on her head.

I'm thinking she has received some tragic news so I get very worried and start asking is every okay, do you need me to do anything, etc. Then she looks up - she is blushing and smiling and shaking her head. "I'm going to tell you this, but you better not tell anyone else until I tell them!" she says.

It turns out there are several parking garages around the office. She was running late for meetings, traffic in the city was heavy, and she decided to park in one other than the one she usually parks and rush a few blocks to the office. She ended up spending most of the day in meetings, and a few crises came up that she had to deal with. Long story short, she left the office after dark, went to the garage where she normally parks, could not find her car, completely forgot about parking it in a different garage, and reported it stolen.

The call came from the police. Security at the other parking garage noticed a car had not been moved for a month and contacted the police, who checked it out and ran her plate, found it reported stolen, and called her to let her know where they had found it.

She was quite embarrassed. The good news is that the folks in the parking garage only charged her for a day, when she explained what happened they got a good laugh and said that alone would cover the cost of the other 30 days.
Click to expand...

That is so weird, that a very similar same thing happened to my girlfriend at a big mega-corp, difference was no charge for the parking at all, as it was free.

It was the funny story told to me when I went there on contract. I of course already knew about it and didn't let on as I wanted to hear what they said about her.
She was not working there anymore.
 
O2Bfree said:
I have a thumb drive on which I keep my financial spreadsheet and also my personal journal, which is a record of various musings and adventures that I don't share with just anyone. I keep the drive in our safe, but occasionally take it to work to print out an updated version of the spreadsheet. One day I lost track of it somewhere between my desk and home. I'd stopped by the restroom on the way home that day, and thought I'd left it on the TP dispenser in the stall. Immediately went back to look for it, and it wasn't there, nor was it in the lost and found. A frantic search of my car and all my pockets made me certain I'd left it in the restroom and someone had taken it.

I wasn't terribly nervous about a coworker seeing my spreadsheet, which is password protected anyways. But I was nervous about the journal! For the next few weeks, I squirmed while studying the faces of my female coworkers, wondering if they were thinking about the personal details they'd discovered, and wondering if those details were being shared around the office. Yikes! :facepalm:

Well, six months later, I pulled a plastic grocery bag out from the wad we keep for trash can liners, and inside the bag was the thumb drive! I use those bags for lunch bags, and must have been carrying my food containers home in one and dropped the drive in, too. Then I probably spaced and took out the containers but not the drive, before stuffing the bag into the wad in the pantry. That drive leaves the house no more!
Click to expand...

I now encrypt my thumb drives , so everything on them is gibberish. This is available regardless of what OS you use.

I find it very relaxing knowing even if they go missing, or I leave them at a relatives house when I go on vacation, that nobody can read my musings.

It's just software you run on the drive, so you can probably still use the same thumb drives.

I use one big long password (a sentence really) for all of them, nothing else to remember :)
 
Janet H said:
Chuckled nervously... yup.

Today I poured OJ into my coffee instead of milk, did the nervous laugh and then looked around the completely empty room in the empty house to see if anyone saw the goof. :blush:
Click to expand...

You could also try lemon juice to compare.
 
jollystomper said:
This did not happen to me, but it was funny...

Years ago I was on assignment at another Megacorp location in a large city. The manager I was working with, who was a friend that I knew before the assignment began, had mentioned to me how her car had gotten stolen from the parking garage next to the office about a month ago, so be careful.

I am in her office discussing something when the phone rings, she answers it, says "Yes... yes..." listens for a bit, gets a funny look on her face, then says "Oh yeah... that was me... thank you, I'll get it today", hangs up, and immediately puts her head down on her desk and puts her hands on her head.

I'm thinking she has received some tragic news so I get very worried and start asking is every okay, do you need me to do anything, etc. Then she looks up - she is blushing and smiling and shaking her head. "I'm going to tell you this, but you better not tell anyone else until I tell them!" she says.

It turns out there are several parking garages around the office. She was running late for meetings, traffic in the city was heavy, and she decided to park in one other than the one she usually parks and rush a few blocks to the office. She ended up spending most of the day in meetings, and a few crises came up that she had to deal with. Long story short, she left the office after dark, went to the garage where she normally parks, could not find her car, completely forgot about parking it in a different garage, and reported it stolen.

The call came from the police. Security at the other parking garage noticed a car had not been moved for a month and contacted the police, who checked it out and ran her plate, found it reported stolen, and called her to let her know where they had found it.

She was quite embarrassed. The good news is that the folks in the parking garage only charged her for a day, when she explained what happened they got a good laugh and said that alone would cover the cost of the other 30 days.
Click to expand...

Back in 1986, my mom had something odd like this happen to her.

She happened to park in a parking lot of a nearly empty store near or after it had closed for the day to carpool with other people to drive from LI into NY City. When they returned, her car, a 1985 Corolla, was gone. She reported it stolen but hear nothing back. The insurance company paid her for the car, which was only a year old, and it was more than enough for her to buy a similarly used car from a friend.

A month later, she gets a call from someone who works at a service station near the store, wondering why a car they had towed there from a store was still unclaimed. An employee there had gained entry to her car and found her registration and tracked her down. After a conversation with him, she was able to piece together all the goofs and other oddities which had happened that night and in the months which followed.

The service station had legally towed her car because it was parked in a private lot and notified the local police in case the owner reported it stolen. But when she reported it stolen, the cops goofed by not checking her report against a list of towed cars. Had that been done, she would have recovered her car right away or perhaps the next day.

The service station employee who towed the car had gotten into an unrelated dispute with his boss and quit or got fired, so he never had a chance to contact my mom sooner. That's why it took him so long to contact her - he had made up with his boss and got rehired. And that delay caused the process of getting the insurance company to pay her off to move forward enough with obtaining and disposing of the car so she could not simply take back ownership of it. The IC had already arranged to have a third party purchase the car, if it were ever recovered, and try to resell it at an auction. My mom was free to attend said auction, if she could determine where it was, to buy back the car. She declined, and moved forward with her purchase of another car from her friend.

A comedy of errors, for sure. But the car she bought from her friend, a 1984 Accord, she would own for another 9 years until she died in 1995. I even had the car for a few months when she was away getting cancer treatment in 1991.
 
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