Absent-minded me (aka The Great Pill Hunt)

Being a worry-wort, I put my rash pills in the top pocket of my work shirt last night before heading off.

I am supposed to take a couple of pills after every meal, and I have an evening meal at work.

Being absent-minded, I discarded them some time during the evening as I was talking to someone.

But who, and where? I pass many rubbish bins in the course of my night. We live in a paperless age, supposedly, but not where I work.

The doctor urged me to finish the whole course, so we could kill off the fungal roots. So, thanks to my absent-mindedness, tonight I will have to go back to the doctor's clinic and ask for more pills, to replace the ones I threw away.

I didn't mean to chuck them. I suspect I was having a tense or animated conversation with someone, and reached into my pocket without being aware of what I was doing.

I found the plastic baggies (as one reader called them) in which doctors here prescribe medicine. Thinking they were rubbish, I tossed them.

I discovered my minor loss last night when I returned from work. My fading memory served up an image of myself folding up the bags and throwing them in the rubbish.

Needless to say, I looked everywhere...for the 100th time, my shirt pocket; my work bag, my trousers, the rubbish bin in my room. Nothing.

Once upon a time, such a minor loss would not have concerned me. But as I get older, I worry more. If I see a sponge in the wrong place by the kitchen sink, I will re-align it. I like my environment to be just right.

I called work to ask someone to check the bins. Kindly, he obliged, but found nothing.

A week from now, I will find them somewhere else entirely, and will discover I did not throw them out at all. It was all in my imagination, as are most things these days. Why can't I spend just a single day grounded in reality?

There are jobs to be done, people to meet (okay, not so many of them - I am a mere migrant labourer in Thailand, after all).

We need to concentrate.

PS: My admission above that I like an orderly living environment is not an invitation to regular reader the Shrink to psycho-analyse. Just chill, fella. In a few more years you'll be just like me, and know what it's like.