Farmer Bill remembers a lot of thing, keeping track of a myriad of details, as do most farmers (also known as small business owners). But little things tend to escape him, such as where he left his glasses, his wallet, his keys, his phone.
Our daughter has been known to say that she spent half her childhood waiting for him to pick her up (he is also chronically late - although usually by less than 15 minutes) and the other half looking for his glasses.
In the early years, I jumped in to look for things quite quickly. But decades ago I gave that up and these days I let him do his own searches & wait to be asked for help.
[He is also the epitome of the 'boy look.' That is a term I hadn't heard until very recently, but when I did, and when I looked into what it meant, it was absolutely Farmer Bill. Go ahead, search it on the interwebs, and watch one of the hilarious videos that result. I always knew I was better at looking for things than Farmer Bill, but I didn't know there was a name for his inability to see what is directly before his eyes. Everyone occasionally overlooks something that is out in the open - I definitely have to look for my phone or my purse occasionally. The difference is that I know the likely places where I've set them and usually find them quite quickly, within seconds. Someone doing a boy look will look at the surface, or what is right in front of them, without moving anything aside to check behind or underneath. And that is Farmer Bill to a T.]
The other night I drove a load of apples up to our daughter's house; our son-in-law would then drive the load to a market for selling. On my way back Farmer Bill called from our business phone and asked about my ETA. When I told him, he said he couldn't find his phone and would wait for me to get back, then drive to his employee's house to check his car. I suggested he take my car, parked in the driveway, so as not to have to wait. He did so, and when I returned, he had found his phone. But not in the employee's car. He'd driven over, thoroughly searched the car, and then driven back, thinking about where else he could look, when it hit him. Earlier that evening he had been adding coolant to his cargo van, and had used the phone's flashlight to help him see into the engine compartment. When he finished, he'd closed the engine compartment, leaving the phone inside. Since he'd driven the van from the shop building to the back of the apple shed to load, and then to the house driveway for easy access in the morning, he was fortunate that it hadn't fallen - deeper into the engine or to the ground - and been damaged.
I can tell tales of the pairs of glasses left in the fields - he'll take them off to better see close up and forget to pick them up again. One year he lost 2 pair of prescription sunglasses and at least one, maybe two, pair of prescription glasses. After that, I began insisting he buy the cheapest glasses and frames possible. And there are at least 3 hearing aids out in the orchard, lost because he would take them out - when using a power tool or driving a tractor - put them in his pocket and then put other things in that same pocket & flip a hearing aid out when getting out the other item(s). I was not always as sanguine about the loss of a hearing aid as the loss of glasses - they are quite a bit more expensive to replace.
As Farmer Bill turned 80 this year, I don't believe he's likely to change the behaviors of a lifetime and start remembering where he left his glasses, phone, or wallet, or remember to look behind and under when searching for something. I do hope that when he isn't farming anymore that he'll have fewer things to remember, and fewer occasions to take out his hearing aids and stuff them in a pocket.
