On the walk back to the car, in a far corner of the Target lot due to bad street parking, after cashing in glass I was approaching a vehicle parked on what would be a sidewalk, save it wasn't, in front of a business. Obsessive compulsive disorder coupled with magical thinking kicked in: Guess the position of the filling stems on the tires, especially the side I'm blocked from passing. I was close on the right rear, but as I looked at the rear left one thoughts of the stem flew away. Back to rationality: there was my driving set of keys on the ground hard by this tire.

A paramedic brother gave me one of those around the neck key straps, adorned with his unit, which fasten with Velcro. Now the Velcro is ineffective, I still use this. The keys have been pulled from my pocket on other occasions, so useful yet is this strap. So panic was bypassed by a more disquieting feeling which resides further back in our imaginary field of control: Other things have happened, this being the easiest, solved before the discovery.

The other day I started driving off to water at the parents' old house and my wallet was not in my back pocket. Okay, with the watering in mind it's near sunset and if I get pulled over, vehicular accident possibility in fully supported denial mode, it'll be within a maximum of 4 miles and I'll claim I had just discovered this. Mission over, I got home and an hour later I noticed the wallet wasn't there. Hold on, I had just been visiting Mom in the hospital 35 miles away and taken the wallet out to ease the long ride. There it was on the front seat---nice to know it was there anyway but what if?---and I hadn't gerry-locked the car for the night (always one more story with me), fortunately the not always well mannered children in the building hadn't looked in.

I'm not finished with the visit to Mom. I had put my reading glasses into a case I seldom use, to read something over a lunch I would take near the hospital, and Velcro returns to the story. The case is an overlap type, Velcro fastened, and then clips onto the belt vertically. Mom was asleep when I got there so I availed myself of a National Geographic in the room and---case, where's your charge?

The glasses were not found between room and parking space, including stairs, and not in the car. They were not in, sidewalk-free shoulder again, an area I parked to comply with a no servicing rule in our building while adding a little oil before leaving. After a half hour of futile searching and turning more red than the triple digit weather could make me, there they were on the kitchen floor. At least the case had goofed right at the outset of deployment.

Stephen B. Hawking recently wrote he had wrung out the last vestiges of a force that pressed the button for creation, that can step out and over ride and communicate. These three objects out of many that can command our attention with their absence seemed to be telling me something. Mr. H., you may have a believer.