I misplace things.
Usually this isn't a problem. I roam over a relatively small range. If I temporarily lose my phone or iPad I can use an app to tell me whether I left it upstairs or at the office or in the car. I have approximately 342 pairs of reading glasses. They're like spiders; I'm never more than three feet away from one. Usually not the pair I'm looking for, but it'll do.
Other misplaced things I can live without until they turn up again. I lost a slipper (a dog was involved); it turned up more than a year later, the day a replacement pair arrived from Amazon.com. I lost sand wedges regularly, but up until about 2005, people always turned them in. (After 2005, people sold them on eBay.)
Once or twice a month I lose my keys for a few minutes. I'll forget to put them in the key bowl especially designated to toss them into. I'll go to grab them and, not finding them, undertake a methodical grid search in which I check back with the key bowl every few minutes to see if they have magically reappeared. (Sometimes, they do. I credit haints.)
If they don't, they're probably in my jeans. Or on a bookcase shelf. Or in the refrigerator. Or maybe in the canvas sack that holds the plastic dog-poop bags in the garage.
Everything has to be somewhere. If you keep looking long enough you will find it.
And my corollary to this theory is that you will find something quicker if you pretend not to be looking for it. So when your lovely wife side-eyes you and asks what you are looking for, you say "Oh, nothing, I am just interested in the expiration dates of these condiments on this lazy Susan in this lower kitchen cabinet which I have never before investigated."
I have sunglasses owned since law school. For the most part, things stick around our house until we intentionally divest ourselves of it. (Karen is more interested in intentionally divesting than I am, but I throw my share of junk away.) They just don't always stick around in the right place. Usually what we think is lost really isn't.
Case in point, when we were moving into the new house we lost our little dog Audi for a full 24 hours.
There was a storm, and storms make her nervous. I was working in the garage with the door open. Karen was working in the kitchen with the door open. She looked around and couldn't find Audi, so she called me and I looked around and couldn't find Audi either. So we assumed she'd bolted out into the storm, which sent me running out looking for her. Karen posted on social media that we were looking for her.
This led to hundreds of people being alerted to her going missing and to dozens of those people getting in their cars and trucks and SUVs and driving all over the Baring Cross neighborhood calling her name and restoring my faith in humankind even as my heart was breaking. (And thank you all for your kind words and efforts.)
After I got back from running around looking for her, a gentleman drove me around in his truck, and that evening I went out in my car and rolled up on neighborhood children asking them to help me find my dog. (I learned later this is a classic stranger-danger scenario.)
We didn't find Audi that night. We went to work the next day because we had to, and when we walked around a downtown block at noon we had four people we didn't know ask us if we'd found Audi yet. We told them we hadn't and by the time Karen left that afternoon to post flyers all over the neighborhood we'd pretty much reconciled ourselves to the fact that we'd lost our small, goofy, and very adorable dog.
I was telling everyone that Audi was so charming and sweet that she'd probably walked up to someone and made a cute face at them (which was how we ended up with her) and that they'd taken the poor waif in. Either they'd make an effort to find her owners and we'd get her back or we wouldn't.
Que será, será.
Then just as I was about to leave the office and head over to the North Little Rock Animal Shelter, Karen called me to she's found Audi--she'd been happy as the proverbial clam (the expression originally was "happy as a clam at high water," which implied they were safe from predators) hiding behind the condiments on the lazy Susan in the lower kitchen cabinet that I had never investigated.
"Don't you dare lie to me," I said, before rushing home to beat the dog so she'd learn never to take a 24-hour nap on a lazy Susan ever gain.
(I am contractually obligated at this point to say that I am kidding and no Audis were made uncomfortable in the production of this column. We have however taken actions to prevent lazy Susan napping--now when there is a storm Audi has her choice of several plushly appointed hidey holes and an assortment of stuffed thunder buddies, some of which she's "borrowed" from her neighbor dogs Topher and Uno.)
Losing Audi was explicable. She crawled off under her own power. I could not explain why my keys went missing for two days last week.
I took my keys out of the designated key bowl because we were going to the dog park and I always drive to the dog park because I've rigged up a harness system in the back. But this particular Sunday afternoon, we took Karen's car because it was a lease she was turning in the next day and she'd only used about 126 of her allotted 30,000 miles. So I stuffed my keys in my pocket with the dog-poop bags, and we went to the dog park.
When we got home, Karen wanted to clean out her car to make it nice for the handover the next morning, and so she handed me her keys to unlock the door. I remember thinking that was unnecessary, that I had my own keys, but it was easier to take them than explain all that, so I took hers, unlocked the door and . . .
I didn't see my keys again for two days.
After a miserable Sunday evening, I stopped panicking by Monday morning, though I did go through the garbage and the recycling three times before putting it out. I spent a solid hour Monday afternoon systematically searching, including looking behind the condiments on the lazy Susan in the lower kitchen cabinet.
Karen put a notice out on WhatsApp. This time, probably because we called "wolf" during the Audi situation, no one turned out to scour the neighborhood.
By Tuesday afternoon, I'd given up and Googled what a new car key fob would cost. ($380. Yikes.)
I was upstairs conducting another systematic grid search when Karen came in from taking out the garbage. She was holding my keys in her hand. She'd found them in the grass--west of the garbage cans. In an area which I had never before investigated.
Haints, I tell you. Haints.
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Philip Martin is a columnist and critic for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at pmartin@arkansasonline.com and read his blog at blooddirtandangels.com.
Editorial on 09/17/2019