I am one of those people who tend to misplace items. I’ve donated countless umbrellas and clip-on sunglasses to the world at large, and I hesitate to estimate how often I go squinting around the house, nearsightedly trying to locate my spectacles.

Over time I’ve adapted to this shortcoming. My presbyopia has me donning and doffing “computer glasses” that are just full-frame renditions of the reading prescription part of my bifocals. So on my desks at work and home, as well as beside my bed and recliner, I have plush lined eyeglass holders. They have reduced, but hardly eliminated, my squinting perambulations.

To further reduce the problem, I have contemplated removing the window sills from our home, along with all of the tables, counters, shelves, and any remaining flat elevated surfaces. My wife, Wendy, countered that I might instead keep my regular spectacles on a cord or chain about my neck, which is far too practical a solution for my taste.

Unwilling to shell out the dough for prescription sunglasses, for years I would regularly buy, and lose, clip-on sunglasses at Walgreens. Recently I decided to return to larger lenses, which presented the opportunity to finally try photochromic lenses that darken when exposed to ultraviolet light.

They have dyes in them with chemical bonds that are broken by higher-energy ultraviolet light, changing the shape of the dye molecules to ones which absorb more visible light.

I love them, but they do tend to have a slight tint when worn indoors. Wendy puts up with them, although she associates tinted lenses with “creepers”, so she prefers my computer glasses. I can’t criticize her take too much, as I still stereotype tattoos as being for sailors, carnies, and criminals, although I realize how unlikely it is that one of out every three Americans fits one of those categories.

As for umbrellas, I just went out to my car and counted. There was one little umbrella in the driver door and six larger ones in the trunk, ready to be left behind in restaurants on rainy days. Our rainstorms just don’t last long enough for my protection.

This week I needed to replace a bunch of huge air purifier filters in the auditorium and Bruin Field House at the high school. I decided to take along a screwdriver to help me wedge open the large metal covers.

I opened my office drawer and grabbed the little screwdriver I made in college.

I crafted it in a physics lab class, cutting a steel rod and tapering it. I knurled the end that would get inserted into the wooden handle, stamped the blade with my initials, and then I hardened it. That involved heating the steel up until it was past the Curie point where it lost its ability to be magnetized. Then I quenched it, dipping it into saltwater brine to rapidly cool it.

The next step was to temper the steel since the hardening process also created internal stresses that made the blade more brittle. The tempering was a second heating to a lower temperature after which I allowed it to cool at room temperature. That restored some of the steel’s ductility.

As for the handle, it was a wood dowel. I bored a hole in the center for the blade and sanded the dowel into an octagonal shape with chamfered edges, then stained the wood and drove the knurled end of the blade into the handle along with some epoxy glue.

The most important step in that process was stamping the blade with my initials. That ensured, almost 40 years later, that my little screwdriver was later returned to me a few days after I inevitably left it somewhere in the high school during the filter replacement process. The stamped initials also helped it appear less like a shank and more like a tool.

Speaking of tools, one of the times I was in British Columbia I of course managed to lose my passport card. They used to just let you drive or ferry across the border with a driver’s license, but later you needed a passport or a cheaper passport card. I didn’t realize I’d lost my card until approaching the border, and I took my chances.

I explained the situation to a border officer, offering my driver’s license and a rueful smile, although I thought about widening my eyes and holding my hat for a Puss in Boots sympathy win. He waved me through, telling me to be sure to file a report on the lost card. Being a good, albeit forgetful, fellow, I did just that.

If I can’t donate an umbrella, I sometimes leave my wallet at a restaurant. I have a habit of leaving it out on the table after I hand over my credit card to the wait staff, supposedly to remind me to wait for the credit card’s return. Wood-grain tabletops are my nemesis, as my leather wallets blend right in with them, especially since I’ve no doubt doffed my spectacles.

I remember leaving a wallet behind at the Spaghetti Warehouse in downtown Tulsa back in the 1990s. I didn’t realize it until I was ensconced in a three-hour-long graduate class miles away. Needless to say, I was distracted throughout the long class, and I drove very carefully back to the restaurant afterward. The wallet was retrieved, and the finders had helpfully emptied it of all the cash as their reward, saving me the trouble.

I’ve also left my wallet at the local Chili’s before, but they returned it without bothering to take the cash. In fact, when I ate there once and realized I had forgotten my wallet somewhere else (this was before smartphones and tap to pay), they said the meal was on them and they looked forward to my return. It pays to live in a small city.

Speaking of cash and smartphones, my latest wallet escape was last week. This time I completely struck out on locating it, which was thankfully the first time, out of many, that I didn’t eventually retrieve it. Wendy was alarmed, but I’m so used to being an absent-minded fool that I took it in stride. It didn’t take long to cancel the five debit and credit cards, and I already had a spare driver’s license in the car…you know why.

Thanks to modern living, losing the cards in my wallet wasn’t a hassle, even though as I write it has been over a week and so far only one of my replacement cards has arrived: my new Apple titanium card. Ironically, that was the only physical card that I had never used.

I did fine without any physical cards, as I was still able to use the Apple Card tap-to-pay feature of my iPhone without a wallet, and my Amazon credit card has no corporeal existence, so it couldn’t be lost. I also had some emergency cash in the car…again, you know why.

The pandemic broke my old daily habit of loading a pocket each morning with four pennies, a nickel, two dimes, three quarters, and two gold dollar coins. A coin sorter still sits on the counter where I place my keys and wallet, but all of the coins are just gathering dust.

I just don’t use cash much anymore, similar to how I seldom write any checks. I used to regularly visit an automated teller machine to withdraw $100 and later $200 in twenties. Then Arvest changed one of their ATMs so that if you withdraw $200, instead of ten Jacksons you get a Benjamin, a Grant, and a mix of Jacksons, Hamiltons, and Abes. That, along with the increasing adoption of tap to pay, led me to abandon using cash for most transactions. Sorry, wait staff!

Losing my wallet did have one happy outcome. For years Glide Apps charged one of my credit cards $25/month for some “legacy” apps I wrote for the school district back when their service was free. I just paid the bill since the service won’t take purchase orders.

Then the legacy service lost a needed feature, so I went through the process of recreating the apps in their new service. Given the effort involved, I threw in working through paying for the new service via a school district credit card. However, repeated attempts to get Glide to stop separately billing me for the legacy apps had been stymied.

So I grinned broadly this week when they started sending me complaints that they could no longer charge me $25 since my credit card was no longer valid. Aw, that’s too bad, ya ninnyhammers!

As for preventive measures against future losses, Wendy suggested I get a bright pink wallet, as none of the victual houses I frequent are adorned with pink formica tables. I instead opted for a high-tech solution, ordering an Ekster Tracker Card.

Supposedly that rechargeable device, which is as thick as two credit cards, will give my phone a left-behind alert, has a 95 dB ringer, and can be tracked with the Apple Find My app. I can’t wait to lose it!