It drives me crazy! What is it with the dropping thing? Every minute I drop something and it disappears. Anyway, I’m getting ready for the day. I write from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. If I don’t, my books won’t get done. I like routine.
After I rinse my face, slap on the new Olay anti-age cream, put drops in my eyes, and take my Walgreens multivitamins with iron, I try to open the bottle of Lipitor. I take 40 milligrams. I hate these friggin’ caps on the bottles. What moron thought of these? First of all, they’re top heavy. Then, what’s with the turn to the right, left, press on the arrow?
Who can see? Some people have cataracts. Don’t they get it? Can’t they use a normal flip-up cap? Dummies. They think if you’re over 50, you need locks on your doors, and impossible tops on bottles.
Now I’m in a bad mood. I press my thumb hard on the top. The bottle drops from my hand, and the friggin’ pills fly all over the floor.
I’m on my knees. My hand slides along the bathroom tile, picking up nothing but dust and hairballs. Where are the pills? The bottle? “Damn!” I shout to no one. “I heard you drop and where are you?”
Time is wasting. I finish blow-drying my hair. Now, the ring. I can’t work without wearing my good-luck amber and silver ring. But the ring drops. I hear it bounce on the floor. On my knees, my glasses on, I look but no ring. No Lipitor pills or bottle. Nothing but a few paper clips and one red button.
I’m anxious. I’m an anxious person. I like to be on time. Maybe because I have abandonment issues. It’s enough that I dropped the TV remote a week ago, and the television has been on all week to CNN. Who can see the buttons on this fancy TV that my son–in–law gave me? He’s a high–tech boomer genius. He also gave me a robot for Chanukah named Harry. He thinks it will keep me company. I get a flashlight, shining it along the floor.
“They couldn’t fly away,” I say to my daughter Bonny on the phone.
“Mom,” she says in a baby voice. “Maybe you should talk to the doctor — you’ve been losing and dropping things.”
“I have not!”
“You lost your cell phone again. You can’t find the remote, and then your house keys. Mom — poor thing. This isn’t good.’’
“So what are you going to do? Drop me in a nursing home and put a balloon around my wrist!”
“Don’t shout Mom. Don’t get excited. That’s why you drop things. Focus.”
“I do focus.”
“You drop.”
“Dropping isn’t a disease.”
“Focus Mom. Gotta go.”
I look one more time, crawling about the apartment, looking for my dropped keys, glasses, cell phones, credit cards, eyeliners, papers with telephone numbers written on them, all the things that live in some invisible hole. Someday I’ll find the hole. Meanwhile I have to figure out how to turn off CNN.
Barbara Rose Brooker is a native S.F. author. A new edition of her novel “The Viagra Diaries,” optioned by HBO, will be published in spring 2013, along with “Love, Sometimes, the Sequel” and “Should I Sleep In His Dead Wife’s Bed,” which has also been optioned for a television series. See more at www.barbararosebrooker.com.