Galvin crop

This is a true story.

I was standing in the kitchen, wondering why I had gone there in the first place, when it came to me: I had a couple of responsibility-free hours at hand.

The older you get, the more you appreciate moments such as that. Everything I had to do had been done — except, of course, for whatever it was I was going to do in the kitchen — and could sneak off for some anonymous time in a local caffeine dispensary, pretending I was doing something important at my laptop (when, most likely, I was checking in on the Red Sox).

I grabbed my 10%-off personal cup and headed for the car.

“Dagnabbit,” I muttered. I couldn’t very well pretend I was doing something important while sipping an iced tea if my computer was left behind.

Back in the house, I grabbed my portal to the Information Superhighway and galumphed back to the garage, stopping only to notice that my reading glasses were where I’d left them — IN THE KITCHEN! (one mystery solved) — and not on my face.

Finally we could, as my father used to say, get this show on the road.

He might have used a colorful adjective (or two) while saying it, but that’s neither here nor there.

Back at the car — or, actually, the sport utility vehicle — when …

Y’know, I don’t remember what possessed me to the degree where I believed it necessary to purchase what its maker says is “The mighty SUV that can do it all.”

(No, it wasn’t the cat.)

I’m not really the SUV type. There are no soccer-playing children to haul to and fro. This thing came with a preponderance of bells and whistles — most of which I’ve never bothered to comprehend.

And, for a mighty SUV that can do it all, it can’t play my CD collection and barely has sufficient cargo space to fit my golf clubs.

… OK, where was I?

Ah yes, in the garage — laptop in hand, glasses resting on ears and nose — about to head out to luxuriate in a couple of responsibility-free hours at the …

“Gordon Bennett!”

You can’t rightly make your way to the caffeine dispensary if you don’t have your car keys. Well, that’s not precisely true. The might SUV is operated, not by keys, but by being in proximity to its fob … but just asking yourself if you have your “car fob” sounds far too bell-and-whistlely for my taste.

Back into the house, back into the kitchen — where the little wicker basket that can do it all was safeguarding the fob, which was attached to the keychain along with actual keys.

As long as I was in a retrieving mode, I decided it was probably just as well to grab the wallet that sat next to it.

This, I will remind you, is a true story. If you’re starting to worry about me — well, first of all, it’s a little late to “start” — let me allay your fears by confessing to be absentminded from an early age.

At the age of 4 (could’ve been 5, or even 3), I chased an invading German Shepherd so far out of our backyard that not only did I forget how to get back home, but my parents did the only sane thing and rope-tied me to a clothesline poll whenever I was outside alone.

And at the age of 44 (could’ve been 45, or even 43), I showed up at the gym for a session with a personal trainer — only to realize I was wearing two different sneakers.

So, you see, it was ever thus.

But now, in the present day, I had everything I had originally forgotten to take with me.

I suppose you think you know how this tale is going to end. You think I’m going to hit the road, having forgotten where I was headed in the first place.

Well, to that I say that’s a load of codswallop. I was headed to caffeine dispensary, so there! And as I sat at a stop sign in the mighty SUV (not listening to a CD), I was sure I would get there … right after I turned around and closed the garage door.

There’s a fob for that, too.