Running to a meeting, I picked up my computer bag and grabbed the power cord from my desk. Arriving a couple minutes early for the meeting, I flipped open the computer, whipped out the cord, and plugged the cord in.

Or rather, I expected to plug the cord in. There was simply no way the cord would connect. The little metal piece that’s supposed to slide into the laptop case didn’t even begin to fit into its socket.

Thinking that maybe I’d gotten mixed up about which laptop I was using (one has the socket on one side, and one has the socket on the other), I carefully examined the laptop from all angles. No, that was the only round hole. I tried it again. No dice. Not even close.

About this time I remembered that people who have strokes sometimes can’t figure out how to do tasks they’ve performed a million times. And I’ve plugged my computer in at least a million times. I’m attached at the hip to this machine. And yet I simply could not wrap my head around how the cord was supposed to attach.

I examined the laptop again.

I examined the cord again.

Both seemed unharmed. And yet the two simply would not connect.

I tried to envision the effortless action of connecting the two — that action I’ve performed more often than I’ve done nearly any other action over the course of the last few years.

I examined the laptop one more time.

Finally, in utter frustration (and not a little bit worried for my sanity), I wrapped up the cord to put it away in my computer bag.

And there, to my complete surprise, was another power cord.

As it turns out, I’d grabbed the cord to a work-owned machine by accident, not realizing that my own cord was already nestled in its little pouch in the computer bag.