Distracted

You know how when you are doing something you do routinely, and you idle your brain and switch on the autopilot? 


Most of the time, no problem, but now and then, some glitch will mess you up. 


I was loading the car for this week's trip to the jam session. Since this is done in the garage, and the space is tight, it involves opening the driver's door, edging the guitar case past the steering wheel and sliding it bout first onto the passenger's side floor. Toss the song book onto the seat, button it up, and go.


It's a small car, and tricky to hold onto the end of the case and get it in the right position. Only weighs like eighteen pounds, but you have to do it with some care.


As I wiggled the guitar into place, my keys in hand, I accidentally hit the remote for my wife's car, turning off her car's alarm. Well, crap. So I got the case in, reset the alarm, buttoned it up and backed out the garage.


That tiny bit of business? It intruded just enough so I missed something. 


Tooled along about half a block and I realized I had left my song book, which is a fat, loose-leaf notebook, sitting on the roof of the car. Wouldn't have been a problem, save for how I realized it.


That would be the loud clunk! that caused me to look at the rearview mirror, and see the book bouncing off the car's fender, down to the road, and the pages fluttering hither and yon onto the street.


I said a bad word. An expletive. Of the anglo-saxon variety.


Said several bad words, actually. Equally bad and expletively.


Braked, pulled over, put the flashers on, and went to fetch the book and loose pages. 


Fortunately, it was not raining, neither was it windy, and not much traffic, so I was able to retrieve the loose papers, but higgledy-piggledy and in no particular order, which made trying to find songs at the subsequent session kind of like a treasure hunt, sans map. Wound up cheating  over the shoulder of another player.


It's always something ...