Things go missing around here. A lot. I don’t just mean those times we can’t find the car keys. I’m not referring to objects we haven’t used for years and can’t remember where we stored them.
I’m talking about when we lay something on the counter and thirty seconds later turn around to pick it up, and it’s gone. There are things that we absolutely know that we put in one location, but they’re just not there when we go to pick them up. Sometimes they turn up again quickly, other times they vanish for months at a time.
There is this little book, for instance: it’s just a handbook on caring for orphaned and injured wild birds. That darned thing has disappeared at least three … um, we’d better make that four, because as I look at the book shelf where I know I put it (because I wasn’t going to let myself misplace it yet again), I realize it’s not there … times. When I want to use it for a quick reference, it’s never where I last saw it — yet, I’m certain I put it there. I’ve located it, always when looking for something else, in the most bizarre places. It was under a bed once, under the night table, and once it was actually on the bookshelf … right where I’d been looking for it for over a week. I wonder where it will turn up this time.
The other day, I had the cordless phone handset in here by the computer. My office is once again temporarily my bed … though I’m much more mobile now than I was a few weeks ago, and the only reason it’s still that way is because I’m too lazy to clean all the junk off the desk. I was on my way out to the kitchen, with the phone in my hand, and realized I wanted to tuck something into the closet first. I set the phone on the desk … looked right at the thing as I set it down, so I was certain I knew right where I laid it. I came back out, reached for the phone to continue to the kitchen … and it was gone.
I looked all over the house, to no avail, grew more and more frustrated, and finally did the intelligent thing: I grabbed my cellphone and called myself.
My pillow, the one I rest my bad leg on when sitting on the bed at the computer, started ringing.
The phone was under the pillow.
Things like that happen around here all the time. Come to think of it, though, they were happening while I was living up at my Dad’s recently, too.
And a memory just struck me … I was maybe thirteen or fourteen years old, living downstate in the little three-room cottage I grew up in. We had a ten gallon aquarium in the entry way by the front door. In the tank were a single huge goldfish and a pair of blue gouramis, almost as big as the goldfish. Mom and I decided to take a walk down the road, to see what the neighbors had set out for their garage sale. We put the dog outside in the fenced back yard, she being our only other pet besides the fish, before we left. We were gone for maybe an hour, and came home chatting casually. I glanced at the tank on the way in the door, and there were the goldfish … and one gourami.
I searched the tank, moved all the plants and castles, dug through the gravel. Even though there was a good solid cover on the aquarium, Mom and I still moved the shelf unit it was sitting on and looked all over the floor, in the shelves, even took apart the baseboard heater.
We never did find that fish.
The old legends say that when things mysteriously disappear, to “blame the little people”, and that you should leave out a saucer of milk to appease them so they’ll stop teasing you. (The old legends don’t take into account the problem with that approach when you live with cats, however.)
Others would call it poltergeist activity, or the work of mischievous spirits.
Most would probably just say that I’m getting senile.
Maybe … but I don’t really think I was senile when I was thirteen. And neither was the fish.
Do you have “mysterious misplacement” stories you’d like to share? I think it would be great fun to read them. Leave a comment below!
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