You see many things about aging. Now that I’m in the senior citizen category, I pay more attention to them. Sometimes I identify way too much with them.

My day to go to Wal-Mart for groceries is, at the moment, Thursday. I was going on Friday (a change from pre-retirement Saturday), but shifted to Thursday, probably for no good reason. The store is a little less crowded Thursday afternoon compared to Friday afternoon.

So last Thursday (not yesterday) I went. I took with me six cloth grocery bags. I hate to bring home a bunch of plastic bags. We recycle them when we get them, taking them to a thrift store for re-use, but I still hate to take them. I stuffed the six bags in the seat portion of the shopping cart and proceeded with my shopping.

One item on my list from the pharmacy section was a bottle of Vicks VaporRub. Actually, I would be okay with the generic store brand and intended to get that. But this WM is re-merchandising and updating everything. That day they were working on the pharmacy shelves, and had the aisle blocked that I needed to go down. But, on the end-cap was a display with small bottles of Vicks. I said the heck with going around to get to the aisle from the other way, so I picked up a box of Vicks and put it in the basket.

Later, at the check out, my purchases needed only four of the six cloth bags. I left the other two in the basket, paid, walked out to the car. When I loaded things in I found the Vicks, still in the basket, hiding with the two extra bags and obviously not paid for.

What should I do? Obviously I should walk back to the store from my distant parking space and pay for it. I decided not to and drove on home. At some point while driving, I realized I could bring it back on my next trip to Wal-Mart and pay for it with the next week’s purchases. That seemed like a good plan. I managed to (unintentionally) sneak it out of Wal-Mart, surely I could sneak it in.

The next day, Friday, I thought I should put that box in a prominent place on the kitchen table so that I wouldn’t forget it on my next trip. But, the box was nowhere to be found. I hadn’t put it in the bathroom or on my night stand or on the dining room table or on the kitchen table or on the kitchen counter or anywhere such products might be put while waiting to be taken to their proper place. Where was that thing? I began to think maybe I had left it in the shopping cart. That would have been fitting since I didn’t pay for it. And the double absent-mindedness was certainly a sign that I have for certain taken my place among the ranks of senior citizens.

The story continues, however. Sunday, as I was fixing a couple of fresh vegetables to go with our leftover stir-fry, as I pulled things out of the vegetable drawer in the fridge, there was the box of Vicks, hiding beneath some zucchini. I include the photo to show that it really did happen. It was indeed double absent-mindedness, just in a different way than expected.

The end of the story is anticlimactic. Yesterday I brought the Vick with me to Wal-Mart, hiding beneath those same cloth bags in the shopping cart basket. I went through the store, made my selections, and checked out, making sure this time the Vicks was on the conveyor. I told the clerk about it, and we had a good laugh together at my expense.

So, while I may be of a certain age, when the brain and many other functions begin to go, or have already gone, I had the wherewithal to sneak something into Wal-Mart. I’ll feel good about that for a while.