Don’t get older, chapter 1

I lost my keys this past weekend.  I looked high and low and up and down – no keys.  Then the last vestiges of my age-ravaged brain began to grind.  I took my keys outside to unlock my car and wipe down the interior from a spill.  I remembered seeing the paper towels on the counter, which meant I must have had the keys in one hand, the paper towels in the other and tossed my keys into the huge trash bin the city gets once a week.  Well, that and the fact I put the mail in the fridge also instead of the leftovers from lunch.  Other than warning signs of my mind going away, no problem, just fish them out, right?

Then I remembered that earlier that morning I had dumped out a bean bag, so about 80% of a 90 gallon bin was full of thousands of little foam beads.  I had to search through about 5 million foam beads.  After 20 minutes of scooping them out, I found a diaper and old Mexican food containers.  As I barreled ahead, I got to the dog shit we had cleaned up and ta-da, there were my keys.  The density sunk them to the bottom – right next to the dog shit.  I realized that I immediately need to stop aging…or then again, it could be the multiple concussions I had from sports.  Or both.