"What a terrible thing to have lost one's mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is."*

Often, the evidence that you have lost your mind comes when you can't find a paint scraper, razor-blade style, and spend hours searching for it, avoiding all else that can and should be done. Sometimes the loss of mind shows up in the form of flames dancing mischievously from the front burner of the stove after you’ve been shopping for two hours. And where did you last see your daughter, ma’am?

A new tube of caulk sits atop a paint can. Another brand new full tube, bought on the penultimate trip to Home Despot, still sits in the utility drawer, where you keep things like new tubes of caulk and could’ve sworn you had, only you couldn’t find it because you were looking for it where you keep the old cans of paint. And so now you have two. But where are the caulk guns?

In the olden days, when your memory was still fresh and young, the worst of your troubles was occasionally forgetting why you went into the next room. Now you have to add your creaking, painful knees to the equation, so that walking down the stairs with a blank and walking back up to jog the memory and walking back down to get the thing and then returning upstairs is more of a burden.

Back to the razor-blade-style paint scraper. You had guests in the house for Father’s Day. Someone obviously stole it, you tell yourself. Otherwise, when you finally find that tool or implement or food product that you put right there, in that exact spot, only yesterday (damn it!), it will not, alas, be keeping your mind company.** That, my friend, will still be lost.

*Spoken by J. Danforth Quayle in a 5/9/89 speech to the United Negro College Fund, whose slogan was, “A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Waste. Find more fun stuff about Quayle here.

**Not true! Both scraper and mind will be found, three hours later, in the living room TV cabinet, where it was hidden from small children. Because you have a good, strong mind. One that cares about children. Yes. That's it. Yes.