It’s that birthday time again, dear brother. Time to choose this year’s winner of the “non compos mentis” award. It was your invention, after all. Your idea to pay tribute to a truly ridiculous incident, the sort that occurred more and more often as we got older, more distracted and forgetful. To credit both the deed and the telling. Tell it good and maybe win a “trophy.” What was the trophy, one might ask? Bragging rights, a pint, and the ultimate prize, laughter instead of tears.

I’m hopeful this year. Already our family circle is lining up their entries: Desperately looking for glasses, while they are sitting on top of her head — not bad. An emergency call to home from a gas station halfway to Boston with no wallet to be found … surely a contender. My own mountain of quarters?

You, my brother had set a high bar. That time with a frozen-shut front door on a frigid Vermont morning when you had an early flight to make. There was the blow-by-blow details of climbing out of a narrow window with your stocky frame and broad shoulders to land a packed snow landing. Nailing the narrative scene of your exit strategy made it a sure-fire win.

So, I was thinking I had the winner this year with my mountain of quarters. It was when my weekly “honey-do list” included the imperative: clean the car. (Alas, I’m my own “honey-doer.”)

I gathered the many quarters (say 10) needed for the power vac at the car wash. If you’ve ever used those vacs, you know that sometimes they eat the quarters and sometimes they don’t run the full time. In any case, it’s good to have extras. Supplied, I headed over to the car wash. Except, halfway there, I realized I didn’t have the quarters because I had put them in my purse and I didn’t have my purse. Back home I drove to grab my purse.

However, back at the car wash I discovered I hadn’t put them in my purse after all. I had put them in the pocket of a jacket that I had exchanged for a sweatshirt. So, now what? Do I head back home again? Decide that the car isn’t that dirty? Or option three, do I get change for a $10 bill (all I had) from a change machine that only gives quarters. And that’s what I did. I got 40 quarters, which is enough to vacuum every inch and cranny of my car and yours as well as mine forever. Except, of course, I won’t.

Gotta be a winner, right? Then Tom, my son-in-law, chimed in. He’s too young to compete, I tried to argue but lost. His story was, in fact, a doozy.

It went like this: Just as he was getting ready for a busy, highly scheduled day, his wife informed him that his long-awaited doctor’s appointment (you know you don’t mess with those appointments) was not next week but that very morning. He quickly changed plans and changed clothes and took off in a mad rush to get from Orange to Greenfield in record time.

Only to encounter not one but three detours. Each detour he clocked was making him late and later, and he hates to be late. Finally reaching his destination, there was yet another construction site and yet another detour, this one smack in front of the doctor office. Thank goodness a kindly cop helped him maneuver the construction to park. Now 12 minutes late, he raced up two flights of stairs, arriving breathless and apologetic.

“I’m so sorry I’m late, “he told the receptionist. And then … what then? Do you already suspect the “what then,” remembering that his is about idiotic mistakes. Of course, you do. Because he wasn’t late at all; Nope, he was a full week early. His appointment was not that morning but the following week, just as he had thought.

And instead of blame and grumpy thoughts, he told us the story and weren’t we all loving his display of frustration and laughing ourselves sick! And wasn’t that your ultimate point, dear brother, that gift of humor to transform stupidity? Our own or each other’s. So that even in our dotage, we still have the ability to finesse a few detours and whatever else sends us around the bend without so much judgment.

Tom, you win this year’s trophy to brag away. “Don’t give up, Sistah,” I hear my brother whisper, “there’s always next year.” And for you too, dear reader.

Ruth Charney lives in Greenfield.

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