Grand Theft Auto, Senior Edition

Life has a funny way of reminding you that age is creeping up on you. Sometimes it is a stiff back when you get out of bed. Other times it is forgetting why you walked into a room. And once in a while, it is when you manage to involve law enforcement in something that should have been nothing more than a routine errand.

Take, for example, a senior couple living here in Costa Rica. On a sunny Friday morning, the wife dropped her husband off at a little coffee shop while she went to la Feria del Agricultor, the local farmers’ market. For her, the market was paradise. For him, a lifelong meat-and-potatoes man, it was the land of kale, sprouts, and conversations about organic chia. He was perfectly happy to be left behind with a strong Costa Rican coffee and his phone.

After draining a couple of cups and reading enough North American news to feel both informed and depressed, the husband stood up, stretched, and headed outside. That is when he froze. The car was gone. Completely vanished.

Adrenaline kicked in. His first thought was, “This is it. Broad daylight car theft. Welcome to Central America.” Without a second thought, he called la Policia. In a frantic blend of bad Spanish and English, he gave them the licence plate number and reported the vehicle stolen. To add urgency, he even tossed in a loud “¡Muy urgente!”

Feeling duty-bound, he phoned his wife with the hardest words a husband can say:
“Honey… the car’s been stolen.”

Her pause was long enough to make him wonder if the call had dropped. Then she said, very slowly, as if addressing a confused child,
“You didn’t have the car. I dropped you off at the café. I’m at the market.”

Silence. Then the creeping realization: he had just called the police on a car he never drove.

But the comedy was only beginning. The Policia, taking his report seriously, did not go to the café. They went to the farmers’ market. Picture this: his wife, halfway through buying mangoes and pineapples, suddenly surrounded by uniformed officers asking about her missing car and possibly her missing husband.

There she was, trying to explain in broken Spanish with her translator app, words tumbling out like spilled beans.
“Mi esposo… piensa… el carro… robado,” she stammered.
Translation: “My husband thinks the car was stolen.”

The officers looked at her, then at each other, then at the papayas in her bag. One finally asked, “¿Dónde está su esposo?” and the wife, now flustered, pointed in three different directions before shoving her phone at them with a fresh translation: “He is… not smart today.”

No crime, no stolen vehicle, just one forgetful Gringo husband who had managed to turn a simple Friday into a minor police incident.

Here is the truth about getting older: it is not just about stiff joints or slower mornings. It is about the mind, slipping here and there like a goat finding holes in the fence. One moment you are sharp, the next you are filing a grand theft auto report on a car you never had.

The moral? Age humbles us in unexpected ways. And if you are lucky, you will have a partner who can stand in the middle of a farmers’ market, juggling mangos and police questions, translating your forgetfulness into Spanish while the whole town watches.