I lose things just as often as the next guy, and I’m not talking about socks in the dryer. That’s a given. The most recent loss was my driver’s license. Not good when you’re on an airplane and you’ll need it for the return flight.
He: You had it a few minutes ago. Look in your purse.
She: I didn’t bring a purse. Two carry-ons. My overnight bag and laptop.
He: I think you put it in your computer case.
She: I looked in there.
He: How about your wallet? You put that in the laptop.
She: Not there. I looked.
He: Allow me.
She hands him the wallet, he rifles through it. It’s thin because all the business cards, discount cards, grocery cards, pictures were left at home. To make it skinny.
He: Aha! It was cleverly hidden behind your Visa card.
Point for Capt. Mark.
The scenario is usually different. I’m the one who has to stop and look for stuff for him in the house. I remember my mother telling me to move things, just move them around and look behind them…especially in the refrigerator or the cupboard. Capt. Mark opens the door, stares at what’s in front of him, and announces, “we must be out of it.” I go over, move things around. “Is this what you’re looking for?”
My kids are the same. My son-in-law is forever losing his keys. It became a family joke to the point he was given a device to attach to his keys that made a sound when a remote button was pushed. My daughter loses her phone. “Call me so I can hear it ringing.”
The point is: we all lose things, important things, things we care about. So why aren’t we more careful? As we age we can chalk it up to memory lapse. But it’s really more. I think it’s distraction. So many things compete for our attention in such small segments of time we rush from one to the other, forgetting what we were doing before. Keys and phones get misplaced. And drivers’ licenses.
Socks are not included. There ARE sock-eating dryers.
What is the answer? Probably isn’t one. Our lives are not getting simpler, the blink society we live in promotes task-interruptus. The best we can do is to develop the ability to retrace our steps, reimagine our past actions because I don’t see the pace slowing in the immediate future.
A sign from one of you who reads this blog was posted on Facebook. It said, “When your mother can’t find it, it’s truly lost” or something to that effect.
My mother was a genius at finding things, but I think she had heightened intuition. It didn’t get passed on to me. And even she couldn’t find those darn socks.