Yesterday I drove a carful of stuff out to Wife's place. We still own (jointly) a storage unit in town where I am, and I agreed last year to pay the rent on it. At this point I'd like to empty it: I've got another (cheaper) one for my own stuff, Wife lives an hour away (so it's hardly convenient to her), and I would really rather be putting that $300 a month towards tuition rather than towards indefinitely storing what is now (mostly) Wife's stuff. So I drove up one carload yesterday. Maybe I can do this every weekend for another month or so and get it empty.
I arrived to find she had moved her car and her van out of the driveway. Turns out this wasn't to be convenient for me, but because someone is coming today to do something to the driveway -- repair it, maybe? -- so it had to be clear. But the very first thing she said to me as I climbed out of my own car was, "I just moved the van and now I can't find my keys."
Sorry, what?
"I just moved the van and dumped some stuff in the trash, and now I can't find my keys. I've looked in the van itself. I even went back in the house to look there, although I don't think I went inside between moving the van and dumping the trash. I hope I don't have to dig through the trash can because there's broken glass and some really gross stuff there. But I can't find my keys."
And all I could think was, ... God, how utterly typical. Did you stage this for my benefit, knowing I was on my way up here?
Probably not, actually. Losing her keys is something that Wife does pretty regularly -- it's almost part of her defined personality, along with her narcissism and her preference for chilled martinis made with Bombay Sapphire gin. It would be impossible for me to count how many times over the years I have looked for her keys for her, starting well before we were married. Easily dozens. Probably hundreds. In our first apartment I pounded a large nail into the jamb of the front door at eye level and gave her strict instructions that the very minute she walked through that door she was to hang her keys on the nail before she did anything else! It didn't prevent her from losing them again, but it did reduce the incidence of the problem. My only point, though, is that this behavior has a long and venerable history stretching back as long as she and I have known each other. If you ever find yourself facing Wife and an exact double, and it's a matter of life and death to figure out which one is really her, ask both women to show you their car keys. The one who can't find them is Wife.
In retrospect, I also have to wonder about her saying she didn't remember whether she went inside the house between parking the car and dumping an armload of trash. Maybe this all happened hours ago, but it looked and sounded like it was just a couple of minutes. And isn't that the kind of thing you'd remember? Not to put in a plug for mindfulness practice, but how is it possible for anyone to be that unaware of what's going on around her? Or does this actually explain some of my other experiences with her over the years?
I unloaded the boxes I had brought her, and put them in her garage (which is already full of a lot of other stuff). Just as true to form, she told me I'd put them in the wrong place because I had blocked a pathway -- no, actually "the last pathway" -- through the stacks of stuff. Whatever. I'm pretty sure she would have said that regardless of where I'd put them. (Or maybe I'm just consoling myself for thoughtlessness by blaming her.) In any event, I hung around for a few minutes trying to suggest places she might have left her keys, and then I left. Honestly, these days it ain't my problem. I felt a little twinge of an expectation to help -- an internal expectation, let me clarify -- but it wasn't guilt so much as habit. So I drove home.
Around 9:30 last night she texted me that she had finally found the duplicate set of keys to the van, so at least she could lock it. She was worried that "in this area you can't leave a car unlocked" ... although it's impossible to tell from the outside whether the van is locked and there's nothing inside it worth stealing. So I assume that in reality nobody would give it a second thought. But yeah, it's good to have a set of keys so you can start it in the morning.
So far as I know she still has to find the original set though.
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