The Keys to Short Term Memory Loss
(Nonfiction)
By Ronald E. Maynard
(All stories displayed on this blog are the property of Ronald Maynard. They are not to be used by any second party for distribution.)
In
2000, I watched the cold New Year's Eve day in a lackluster mood as it produced
various shades of gray clouds that consumed the sky. Boredom overcome me
as rain drizzled in periodic showers for most of the early morning. Candace and
I lived in a tiny apartment in West Carrollton, Ohio at the time. We sat and wondered how
we would spend our evening. The cramped space in our apartment made just enough
room to live a cozy life together. We were a young couple. Our
property owner – Randall left a day earlier for a weeklong vacation in Florida.
He had always told us about his daughter’s ability to provide an available key
if we were ever locked out of the apartment. We mostly had quite neighbors and
were fortunate to live in an inexpensive area. We had never needed to rely on
anyone but ourselves, so for the few years leading up to this incident; we barely had
spoken to our neighbors. I considered the people around us to be the type of neighbors
to never bother a single soul; therefore, we did the same. We never bothered
them.
On this
day was a typical one like most days where we sat around with nothing planned for the night.
Candace cleaned the house all morning. I worked creatively on the computer. One
would think that a day like New Year’s Eve, in the year 2000, surely provided many options
for a monumental celebration, which I believe did happen all around the world.
The phone in the living room rang, Candace answered. To our delight, it was
Candace’s aunt Joan. She called us to see if we had plans for the evening. Joan
was having a New Year’s Eve party. After explaining, that they planned to eat dinner and then play
cards all night, and wanted Candace and me to join in the festivities. We
agreed to be there around 6:00 p.m. to eat.
I
am somewhat familiar with playing card games. While living in New Orleans,
Louisiana as a young adult, I worked as a roustabout on an offshore oilfield
platform. I can testify that many of the folks down on the bayou play cards
like a pro. People often gathered to play cards with friends, family, and
sometimes I would set in on a few hands. I was more a fish then a shark in
these infested waters. Oilmen played cards on crew boats on the way out to the
platforms. Those Cajuns took their card playing seriously. These men and women played for
real and had no time for a foolish boy just entering manhood. Most of my experience
playing cards ended with lost income.
Admittedly,
we were amateurs. Candace and I played the card game “War” until the late hours
of the night, which besides Rummy – War summed up the extent of our card play.
Candace always laughed at the noises that I made as I laid each card down before us. I
could perform various card tricks. My goofy personality amused and impressed her.
Still if boredom arose, we sat up most nights, Candace and I made for a good
match at a lengthy game of Rummy. We never made bets unless it dealt with our
clothing. I liked winning hands. I think Candace liked to win some too. We were
young and liked to spend time together. We were also broke most of the time.
Candace managed to straighten up the house, the afternoon sky cleared to partly cloudy,
and then we realized the hours had escaped us. Candace showered around 3:30
p.m., and then dressed in the bathroom. She put makeup on her eyes, and repeatedly
ordered me to start my process. Primping was not a necessity for me. I pulled
away from my artwork to jump into the shower, and when I came out of the
bathroom, Candace was ready to go. Candace bickered about me getting ready on
time.
She
said, “You take longer then most females.” She was not the type to complain
about petty little things. I had held up us leaving on an occasion when we
found something to do.
Candace
is a delicate flower, however, she can also be a strong bullheaded female with
a mind of her own. I had never made plans to piss her off. We had planned to
leave around 5:00 p.m. to calculate for the busy holiday traffic. I managed to
finally get ready around 5 o’clock, and once ready, we headed for the door.
Candace grabbed her purse then walked out, I followed with my hand firmly
gripped on the brass knob. I closed the door behind me. My fingers twisted the
vertical mechanism of the lock as I entered outdoors. Our neighbors, Tony and
Kim had stood, waved at the two of us, and yelled to us.
They
said, “Happy New Year’s.”
I
said, “Happy New Year’s.”
I
walked across the street to greet them. They met me with a smile and a typical
handshake. I had frozen up because Candace asked me for the keys to the car. I
patted my pockets to double-check my realization. I had left my keys on the
shelf of the entertainment center back inside the apartment. I gave a look
towards Candace. She returned the look with despair. We had locked ourselves
out of the apartment.
I
asked, “Candace, do you have your set of keys?”
She
replied, “No.”
Tony
offered us the opportunity to use of his home phone but we both had cell phones
in our pockets. Whom would we call anyways? We stood there contemplating the number
I had for Randall’s daughter, but I had long before lost the slip of paper with
the number on it. Randall never offered anyone a spare key. Candace and I
talked many times about making one and stashing it somewhere outside. It was
not as if we had the choice of throwing a brick through the front window. I
could not help to think that in that very moment my short-term memory loss had struck
again.
The
rain started to trickle down out of the sky as I paced. I looked at the locked door
and windows. I literally saw my keys on the shelf. Candace’s keys were sitting
on the top of the entertainment center. Mine sat directly below hers. They were
just where we had left them. We needed a plan to get the keys if we were going
anywhere. At that point, I had felt like blowing my top. My frustration had
gotten the better of me. I had to accept that there were no other excuses for
this type of situation. Complaining had not helped me to get into the apartment
thus far.
I
rummaged through my camcorder bag to see if a miracle MacGyver tool had miraculously
appeared out of nowhere. I had known there was no tool in the bag. I needed a
tool to shimmy my way into the front door. I had finally decided to use my
driver’s license but that only managed to scrap off my information on the card.
I had seen this trick work in a dozen movies. It just did not work for me at
that moment. At that point, I had become even more frustrated. Candace laughed
at my growing attitude. She joked later that she should had filmed the whole
thing. I am glad she did not get that footage.
It
had gotten dark as rain continued falling harder than ever and the cold air
plummeted below 33° degrees. Rain shifted to light snow. We stood there baffled
to what we should do. We searched the property for useful items to get in the
door. Our neighbors had brought us coffee to warm our bodies. We called around
to price a local locksmith. I had to fight all temptation to break a window. I
had no money for a locksmith or a window. Candace and I bickered back and
fourth as time passed quickly. I had come up with a clever idea.
A
window unit air conditioner on the one side of the front window had two louvers
on each side of the unit. I had slid the louvers to the side and that gave us
access to a small hole. I then stuck my arm through the hole all the way up to
my shoulder, but I could not reach the doorknob from the inside. I pulled my
arm out, cussed up a storm, and paced around the yard frustrated. In a
neighbors yard, Candace had found some garden stakes with some old cloth tied
to the tops. We constructed a long contraption to reach the fifteen feet or so where
the keys laid. Once I tied the contraption’s components together, I held the
long post up in the air to test the durability.
My
neighbor had come over to point out an obvious defect in my contraption. Tony
suggested that I hammer a nail into the end, and I agreed. I banged in a nail
and I started the process of fishing the long post through the tiny space aside
the air conditioning. Candace held a flashlight over my shoulder. We both shivered
as the night fell. Now as I inched closer, I fed the contraption hand over hand
through the hole towards the entertainment center’s position. I held the weight
of the post in the air then slammed the end down in the area of the keys. I remember
my arm shook from the weight of the post. I had flopped the post on the top of
the entertainment center, moved it nail slowly until I hooked the key ring,
then drug them inches-by-inch onto the floor. I had lost the key’s ring multiple
times. I had repeatedly missed the mark.
Time
after time, I stretched out my arm to its farthest point. Angered by my failure
to retrieve the keys, finally, I threw the damn stick away like a spoiled child.
The window ceils scraped the skin off my shoulder. I repeatedly missed the
ring. My frustration
level rose to the heavens. Candace laughed hysterically, and she said, “I think
I peed a little in my pants.”
I
had twisted and turned my mighty contraption. I watched it twirl near and far –
away and back again, and I finally hooked the keys again. I gently dragged them
towards me. I watched as they fell onto the floor. I had to take a deep breath.
I dragged the keys across the carpet, and finally exhaled my breath. I had
pulled the contraption back, hand-over-hand, until I grabbed the keys in my
palm. I finally had succeeded my challenge. We both had jumped with excitement;
so excited that we had flung ourselves onto the ground. We rolled in the wet
snow and grass like two dirty dogs. Our neighbors had applauded our efforts as
we felt the true feeling of being the victor.
We
had finally opened the apartment door. Candace grabbed her keys from within the
apartment and went to start her car. I had relocked the apartment. Still frozen,
I joined her in the warmth of her car. We went and
played cards until late. We drove from
Lebanon late into the early morning hours. I knew that I needed to slow down my
thoughts and actions. Later, I recalled numerous occurrences of the same sort
of short-term memory loss left me in a pickle of a situation. I guess it is
hard to break bad habits. I will always remember Y2K for its come and gone era,
but the challenge for me is the art of finding my damn keys.
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