If I could have a super power.....

Just once, I would like, for an entire week, to be able to find my car in the carpark at the end of the day. Five days, I beg you, five in a row. It has not ever happened.

I can chalk this up to gremlins. I can chalk this up to Murphy. I can chalk this up to being blondish (yes, the hair is real, but you were probably thrown off by the eyebrows, which are not real. Because I do actually paint my eyebrows on....truth be known, you can't see them when I do not and you would otherwise find yourself thinking "oh my god, does she have alopecia?" if you were around when I got out of the shower in the morning).

The garage is only 7 stories. Large, but, truly, not insurmountable. I see plenty of other people walking to their vehicles with a singularity of purpose each night. I, on the other hand, am walking with a false sense of casualness to belie my trepidation. I think I know where I parked this morning, and yet, having been so wrong, so often, I cannot sally forth with any confidence.

I carry my keys and my phone in my hand. The phone is not to call my car (though wouldn't THAT be handy), rather it is a prop, so that when the folks I got out of the elevator with on floor F, see me again as they descend on floor D, I will appear purposeful and occupied with what clearly has to have been an urgent phone call to distract me from the business at hand (of locating my vehicle and finally going home). I smile at them as they buzz past with my best "wouldn't you know it....unavoidably detained here" look. It is only as they've rounded the last pillar that I can pull the phone from my ear and begin my search anew. If I leave right on time there are lots of people using the elevator and succesfully driving home so this cycle can go on for quite some time as I wander from floor to floor, secretly searching while talking some imaginary jumper off the ledge on my cell phone.

Occasionally I will realize that another soul is in the same boat (that would be the S.S. ShortTermMemory) with me. We will both walk down the aisle only to turn around and head back to the stairwell, together. Smiling with embarrassment at each other sometimes we will even acknowledge the dilemma. "I can't find my car" I whisper. "Me neither!" They whisper back. "This happens to me almost every day" I reveal, emboldened by their admission. "Me TOO!" they will reply. Someone told me once that the secret was to park on the same floor every day, that way the guesswork was removed.

Unfortunately, I cannot seem to remember that tip either.