When I was a kid, while my mom worked in downtown Buenos Aires, my grandmother Herta would greet me every day at her appartment in the 8th floor above Vicente López after school (back in those days I only had classes in the mornings) and prepare my lunch; she would then go for a nap or to watch some telenovela, while I did my homework in the dining room table.
That all changed after her passing in April 1985. All of a sudden I’d come back to an empty home, and would have to learn to heat some leftovers or even sometimes cook something for myself from scratch.
Until one day I realized in the middle of my class day that I had forgotten my home keys, and hence there was no way to enter home.
I panicked, as the 11 year old I was still, and asked to call my mom at work to let her know. She called a friend of ours, and I ended up having lunch at the home of Graciela and “Neno” Grosso, the parents of my school friend Leonardo and his older sister Silvina (if you guys are reading this, hi!)
The panic I felt that day was kind of a shock, and it left a visible mark in my psyche and my Virgo maniac attitudes: the checklist. Without exception, every time I leave home since that fateful day 41 years ago, I have repeated in my head the same song in Spanish:
“Llaves, guita”.
Translated from Rioplatense Spanish to English, that would read as “keys, cash”. And I would recite this poem in my head while reaching for those items in my pocket, just to make sure they were there.
Around 1986 my mom gifted me my first wristwatch, so I added a new item on my checklist:
“Llaves, guita, reloj” (“keys, money, watch.”)
That song stay fixed in my head as I moved to Switzerland in 1991, and then back to Argentina in 1998.
Precisely, in 1998 I bought my first car (a white Ford Ka dubbed “Gutiérrez”), so the song became:
“Llaves, guita, reloj, llaves del auto” (“keys, money, watch, car keys.”)
In 1999 I got my first cellphone, so the song changed accordingly:
“Llaves, guita, reloj, llaves del auto, celular” (“keys, money, watch, car keys, cellphone.”)
I sold my car in 2001, and after my short stint in Patagonia I moved back to Switzerland. No car, so the song went back to
“Llaves, guita, reloj, celular” (“keys, money, watch, cellphone.”)
In July 2008, almost at the same time, Claudia and I bought our current car (a lovely red Fiat 500) and we also got our first iPhones 3G, so that the song all of a sudden became again
“Llaves, guita, reloj, llaves del auto, iPhone” (“keys, money, watch, car keys, iPhone.”)
And finally, in 2011 I started using reading glasses, which means another item on the list:
“Llaves, guita, reloj, llaves del auto, iPhone, anteojos” (“keys, money, watch, car keys, iPhone, reading glasses.”)
So, there you have it. It’s weird how one’s mind gets used to such routines, and how I can’t avoid going through the same list every time I leave a place (not only home, to be honest.) I have tried to instill that knowledge and practice to Claudia, but… she’s not a Virgo, so it doesn’t speak to her like it does to me.
And yet, despite such discipline… I still manage to forget things every so often, so it’s not completely foolproof.