Slip Slidin' Away

Getting old is hell. This is nothing new, nor is it even a new topic for me. At the same time, though, it can be mildly entertaining and gently amusing at times.

For example, last week, I was sitting in the parking lot at Target during my lunch period from work. I tend to drive over to Target and grab a yogurt, a banana…that sort of thing. We can’t eat at our desks at work and so I usually sit in my car and quickly devour these items while watching various people walking in and out of the store. It doesn’t sound exciting, I know, but it sometimes can be a bit interesting.

On this particular occasion, I noticed something extremely odd. I had already been sitting in my car for a couple minutes and was parked next to one of those large cart corrals where customers can place their shopping carts after wheeling them out into the parking lot. The strange part was that this particular cart corral was slowly moving. I looked in total disbelief. Was it the wind? How can the wind move a cart corral like this that’s made out of metal, plastic, etc.? It was completely puzzling. I stared at it for a few seconds, pondering this bizarre anomaly, before it occurred to me to look forward… Umm…the cart corral wasn’t moving…my CAR was moving!

I quickly applied the brake, just prior to gently colliding with the car parked in front of me! Apparently, when I got in the car, as a now semi senile creature of habit, I not only started my car so that I had some a/c but also released the parking brake and, since my car has a manual transmission, it was free to “roam where it wanted to”. And so, my car evidently was slowly creeping forward for some time without me noticing it.

Now, this was pretty amusing to me since, well, it worked out okay. I’m not entirely sure that I would have been giggling about it as much if I did indeed hit the car in front of me, though. This is a fantastic example, however, of the sort of stupid thing that I find myself doing these days. I’ve never done this sort of thing before. In fact, I’ve always been quite the opposite, an incredible perfectionist. Not anymore. Now that I’m hitting middle age, perfection has flown out the window, or more appropriately helped me slide down the road. It’s actually a little scary.

Senility, here I come…