My Incredibly Stupid Move

I haven't done anything this stupid in a while. I was whining that I had to go to the mailbox on the corner, and I had worked this up in my mind on par with climbing Mount Everest. After much procrastination, including deciding to take a shower, wear my new winter coat, take out the garbage as I go, I head toward the door carrying the bunch of outgoing mail, the garbage, my keys, my purse. I see that my maintenance bill (like a condo fee) is under the door and I contemplate whether I should stop and write the check or just keep going. I decide to keep going, and I open the door to see what might be a letter carrier at the mail boxes which means I could just hand the mail to her.

In other words, I had a lot of details on my mind. It turned out to not be a letter carrier so I proceed outside, throw away the garbage, go to the mailbox, stop to buy a magazine, stop at the corner pizza place for a late lunch, come back home, sit on my steps for a while because it really was a mild day.

A grocery delivery guy arrives to deliver to my building and I start to get up so he can get by me with all the bags of groceries. And I decide to get up and go back inside. I hold the door open for him, and finally as I turn to go to my apartment, I see my front door is wide open.

Yes, folks, I never closed the door behind me.

What was funny is that I had also left the lights on since I wasn't planning to be gone long so any n'er-do-well would no doubt be hesitant to enter my apartment since who the hell would leave their front door open and the lights on if they weren't home?

Nothing was amiss, and I remembered that about 25 years ago, I spent the evening with the keys to my apartment in the front door. Only when I tried to leave in the morning and turned my apartment upside down looking for my keys did I open the door in desperation and found them.

I do not take this event as the onset of senility -- diagnosis is too much on the mind.