Air Tags

They're cheap -- only $20. I got a couple Apple Air Tags to track my keys and luggage. 

I'm at the stage of life where I bring reusable shopping bags into the grocery store, put them in the top of one cart, take a different cart, and never realize I've left the bags behind until I'm ready to check out. 

It's not the dopey attention lapse that bothers me, it's my utter mystification when items I knew I just had simply disappear. Poof. It's increasingly disorienting.

So, tracking devices.

When I flew to California to see the grandkids I clipped one onto my luggage and it was reassuring -- probably unnecessary, but still reassuring, to see my checked suitcase got on the plane and my phone let me know when it made it to my destination. Whew.

There are safety features to warn if an Air Tag is slipped into a place it shouldn't be -- if someone is secretly tracking you, you'll get a notice on your phone and then you can find where the little disc has been hidden, in case you are someone who is being stalked, rather than just a confused person who leaves things behind.

I was tracked once. When we took a trip to Death Valley one year, we stayed at the resort at Furnace Creek. Our motel room was just a few hundred yards from the restaurant, and as we walked back after our meal, I got a notice on my phone saying an Air Tag was tracking me.

That was unnerving. Had someone slipped one of the tiny tracking discs in my pocket at dinner? Why? 

I could not find the device anywhere, but I could see my phone visually tracking me as I walked back to the restaurant, circled the parking lot, went inside the motel -- it showed me all my movements. Eek.

The tag beeps to let you know exactly where it's stashed. There was no beep. After about 45 minutes the tracking went away. Nothing.

I think the vast remoteness of Death Valley scrambled signals and created a false alarm. There was no Air Tag. But that was unsettling. 

So far my Air Tags haven't kept me from losing glasses in every room of the house, leaving shopping bags behind in a cart, or wondering where the clean towels I just washed got put.

They have not helped me find the box of macaroni I know (I think) I bought but can't locate so I had to substitute orzo and then I couldn't find the recipe so I made hot dogs.

But I know exactly where my suitcase is right now.