Get It Off Your Text*

My housemate Eyes and I have a problem. Owing perhaps to our hard partying in our younger years, or maybe just to family traits of forgetfulness, we are exhibiting signs of early onset dementia.

I have lost count of the number of times stuff has gone missing recently when I've been on a night out. In January last year, my bag containing my passport was stolen from my work local just four days into my new job. A few months later, my bag was stolen again in the SAME pub....I'll stop there because sometimes stupidity is such that it needs no further explanation (and I still cringe in humiliation when I think about, so case closed). Over the course of the last 6 months, I have been through 3 phones, 2 mp3 players and had to replace the contents of my make-up bag twice.

The obvious explanation for this is that I must have been blitzed out of my head to be so careless. In some cases, yes, I admit I was far from sober and probably not as careful as I should I have been, to go for the massive understatement. In others, however, such as the case of the two bags in one pub, I was completely sober both times.

Eyes, on the other hand, does not lose his own stuff. He does things on a grander scale, such as leaving our front door open when going to work in the mornings - 5 times now and counting - and leaving the iron on all night, and sometimes all day too. Whereas my indiscretions lead to me having to spend a lot of unecessary cash on replacing things I already had, his have so far not had any nasty consequences, but have the potential to bring our carefully built lives crashing down upon us like a tsunami. I dream sometimes of coming home to find our house ransacked (hey look everyone, it's like living in Jozi!), or getting a call from our landlord telling us the flat has burnt down, and my enormous, painstakingly put together wardrobe is in a pile of ashes at his feet. I sometimes wake up shrieking from that one.

In other mishap news, I have just had a Most Embarrassing Moment, which I shall share for your amusement.

I have a good mate in SA named Dave, and today is his birthday. So this morning I texted Dave to wish him. I got a reply saying thanks dude, but it's not my birthday, from Dave S. A classic case of saving the wrong number under the wrong name - Dave S is a guy I went to primary school with. But wait, it gets better..... I have been sending texts to and receiving texts from "Dave" all through Christmas and New Year. It did strike me at the time as kind of odd that the replies were pretty generic, and a little impersonal for a good friend. But I let it go, and peppered my own texts with things like "I really miss you" and "can't wait to see you". I can only imagine what Dave S has been thinking as he received these mushy messages from a girl he hasn't seen in 15 years.

To top it all off, after I replied to Dave S this morning explaining my mistake, I get this text back:

Sure I saw you in Sainsburys in Colliers Wood a few weeks ago?

So not only have I practically been declaring undying love to a man I barely know, but he also lives nearby and I am very likely to run into him at some point in the near future.

I think I need Alzheimers Anonymous....now if only I could remember where it is.

*stolen shamelessly from the London Lite