Some days it feels like you just can't win

The Baltimore Sun

It was a sunny Saturday that began normally enough. It just didn't last.

The first hint came as I was using a small portable car vacuum that plugs into the dashboard socket to suck up the dust and dirt from my wife Liz's car.

To get the thing to work, I had to put my car key in the ignition and turn it to get electricity. So far so good.

I finished, locked the car and realized that the key was still inside, draining juice from the battery. Then I realized I had locked the front door of the house behind me and Liz was in the shower.

I knocked on the neighbors' door and, red-faced, asked to borrow my own house key. They got a good laugh out of that.

I ran in, got Liz's keys, gave the neighbors their key back, retrieved my keys and drove off to do a couple of errands. Fortunately, Liz was reading when I got back and had no errands of her own. I suddenly realized I still had her keys in my pocket.

Things began looking up, though.

We put together a quick picnic lunch, hopped into our convertible, and dropped the top for a sun-splashed ride across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Queen Anne County's Terrapin Park. We enjoyed a nice lunch and a walk around the oyster shell trail, stopping to watch the wind-churned bay waters, a couple of shy deer, a great blue heron, three swans and some parasailing surf-boarders skipping across the waves.

Liz drove on the way back, and as we reached the crest of the westbound bridge, I saw an old gray ship emerging from beneath the span. Suddenly realizing it was the John Brown, the restored World War II Liberty Ship out for a cruise, I excitedly grabbed my camera, snapped off the seat belt, rose on my knees and tried to get a shot between the flashing metal bridge railings zipping by.

As we passed over the ship, I turned my head to the rear, which is when the wind caught my eyeglasses, aided by a cheap, one-piece plastic sunglass insert that acted like a sail, blowing them off my face and far back into traffic faster than my mind could conceive what was happening.

I couldn't believe it. I rode home in a funk. I called the Maryland Transportation Authority police who patrol the bridge, and timidly wondered aloud what the chances were of finding the glasses intact. I realized, I said, it would be a 1,000-to-1 shot, but the polite police officer said the odds were way longer than that, and they wouldn't risk high-speed traffic to look anyway. Fortunately, my last pair of glasses was still available, and my vision hadn't changed - much. Then I sat down at our relatively new computer to write about my day, and after a few minutes' more anguish and a call to a nice woman in India, I figured out where the word processing program was .

I found it. I worked it out. I wrote about my silly, annoying, frustrating, embarrassing day.

I worked it all out, and as difficult days go, it wasn't really that bad.

It's just sort of worrisome, though - that question creeping around inside my 62-year-old brain.

Is life getting harder, somehow?

larry.carson@baltsun.com

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