No Easy Pass

Looking for second chances to make up for memory lapses.

Now that I’m in my 60s, I’ve become more self-aware of my memory failures. I take stock of these misfirings. I have an image, probably from a textbook, of electrical signals getting blocked trying to cross synapses. Some memory lapses are of the word-is-on-my-lips variety, and others are failures with names. These typically happen when I run into someone out of context, say, the guy from purchasing, who is usually in a suit, wearing running gear in the park. Then there are the more troublesome washouts, those that imply that something wasn’t put away in the right drawer, to use another metaphor for memory.

One morning, early, before daybreak, my daughter woke me up. Groggy, I had trouble understanding what she was saying. She was driving to visit a friend who lives a few hours away on an Air Force base. Perhaps she was letting me know she was heading out, making sure I was set to take care of her dog.

When her voice finally made sense, she was asking me about her E-Z Pass, the only remnant of the clunker she drove around Chicago for a few years before she moved back home. A split second later, I remembered velcroing it to the windshield fastener on the Ford Escape we had rented for our vacation a few weeks ago. Until that moment, the borrowed E-Z Pass had been completely forgotten. When I told her I must’ve left it in the rental car, she snarled, dripping with reproach, “Oh, dad! Okay. I gotta go.” I turned over, wondering, how can parents be so irresponsible?

While waiting for my first cup of coffee to drip out, I recognized how complete and total my absentmindedness had been. I remembered taking the E-Z Pass from the little drawer on the lamp stand where she keeps small things, but had she not asked me about it. Who knows if I would have ever remembered taking it. Was my forgetfulness a sign of an aging mind? Probably not, but I was determined to make it right, another stubborn trait that is more effortless with age, a need to conquer chaos, to keep things orderly. No wonder those insurance commercials with Dr. Rick on preventing you from becoming your parents are so spot on.

That morning, I set off to retrieve the device, undeterred by the fact that it had been at least two weeks since we got back from vacation.

Fortunately, my daughter had her E-Z Pass number somewhere on her phone and texted it to me. At the Hertz Rental Car office, the attendant looked up my rental history. She let me know that the Ford Escape I had rented was out, but due back the next day. She also responded that she could not call the current renter to check if my pass was still on the windshield. It was against company policy.

She asked me to wait a moment, got up, and walked into the back room without saying anything else. She returned with a bouncy step and a box full of E-Z Passes. There were at least a couple of dozen orphaned devices. A sense of relief washed over me for two reasons. First, there was a good chance our unit was in there, and, two, it was obvious I was not the only dullard on the Upper East Side. She handed over the box so she could attend to a customer that had just walked in.

I sorted through the devices, but none matched her serial number. The attendant said she would place a note on the current rental contract, suggesting I stop by again tomorrow in case it was still stuck to the windshield. She also recommended I check online to make sure the E-Z Pass hadn’t been used, something I planned to do once I got the website information from my daughter, still enroute to the base.

Fortunately, no one had used the E-Z Pass in the prior two weeks, so rather than canceling it, I set out the next morning to check once more at Hertz. A different attendant — an eager-to-please young man — let me know the car had been returned the night before, early, and it went out right away. Although the note from the other attendant was still there, he said, he wasn’t sure if the windshield had been checked. He offered me the box of unloved devices again, just in case it had been thrown in there the night before, but still there was no match.

He noticed in the car’s history that, a few days earlier, it had been “reset” — a thorough maintenance and clean up, he explained — at the former Thrifty Rental Car on the Upper West Side, now owned by Hertz. He harped on how thorough these resets were, making it likely they would have spotted and retrieved my E-Z Pass. He suggested I go across town to check with the manager there before canceling it, especially given that no one had taken it to charge tolls. Thrifty was on my way to work, so it was an easy stop to make.

It had rained overnight, giving way to a heavy, humid summer morning. The sidewalk in front of the Thrifty garage was still wet. One of the workers was out front, and he pointed out the manager getting out of a car he had just prepped for a waiting customer. The manager’s forehead was beaded with sweat, his white collared-shirt beginning to show wet spots on his stocky chest. He motioned for me to follow him with my inquiry. He was a busy man.

I chased after him into and through a car elevator. Once I said “missing E-Z Pass,” he said, “wait here,” without even looking back at me. He went to the rear of the garage and was quickly back juggling too many E-Z Passes. He gave me a few to prevent any from dropping to the floor. We checked the eight to ten devices, but none matched my daughter’s numbers. I thanked him for the help and headed to work, feeling a little bit of that misery that supposedly loves company. The experience left me wondering how many other things have I lost, figuratively and literally. If there’s any consolation, it’s that I’m not missing any of them. Not yet.

That night my daughter canceled the device and ordered a new one. Why I didn’t do that in the first place, I’m not sure. Perhaps if the device found its way back into my hands, forgetting it so completely, as I had, wouldn’t feel so careless, so irresponsible. Finding it would’ve given me a second chance to make things right, a second chance to answer her question with an enthusiastic,“here it is!”

See more of my writing at The Ink Never Dries: medium.com/matiz.