Everyone misplaces something sometime, but people in The Home can misplace things right it front of their eyes. I’m not talking about imagination or in a stack, under something or in a drawer or cupboard. I mean right in front of your eyes. An item lying right where you are sitting or standing or appear to be looking. Right where you always leave it.
We got into a discussion this morning about items we lose. It seems that the more important it is the harder it is to find. The mind runs in circles and closes the eyes, or something like that. Maybe we are thinking of the item being somewhere else while staring at it. No, we are not blind, nor is our eyesight fading. We just can’t see. It’s a cloud or something.
One told the story of setting her keys down on the small table at the door like she always does. The difference was she set her purse in her bedroom when she normally sets them down together. She looked at the table and her purse was missing. Then she remembers she put her purse in the bedroom. She finds the purse and totally empties it (probably a good thing anyway) to find the keys. Panic sets in. She looks under the bed. She goes back to the small table. She looks under the table, in her kitchen, in the sides of her favorite chair, and on the floor following her trail. She calls her neighbor. Would you please come and help me find my keys. Her neighbor walks in and immediately sees the keys where they are always placed. How embarrassing! Almost everyone had a similar story.
Another lost her cell phone. Several of us we asked to call her phone. She could not hear it in her apartment. A friend had to come to the apartment and keep calling until it was found under a pile of clothes at the bottom of her closet. She had left it in the pocket of a pair of slacks.
The most dangerous thing for me is to put something in a safe place. Unfortunately I have never established a consistent “safe place.” Because it varies from item to item and the things that are put in safe places are seldom used. As a result I cannot remember where I put them. The last item I did that with was my passport. Obviously it should go in a safe place. But where! I knew where my expired passport was. It was not in a safe place. It took a lot of digging. I am not a fully organized human being. Just partially organized. I have always hated filing and retirement has not improved that one bit. I file in piles (Hey, great title for an organization book on filing)
I once lost a pay cheque (for my Canadian friends, and because I lost it there). I had already signed all four checks (for my American friends). When I got to the teller, I only had three. Naturally, like any normal human being. I panicked, and attempted to retrace my steps. I was sure I walked into the bank with it. But where was it? Maybe I signed it on my desk at my office. Off to the office I ran. Nowhere. After extensively searching my office and nearly cleaning it by filing my stacks, I gave up and decided to go to the bank and cash my other three for a total of $45. When I got to the teller I sheepishly asked if anyone had turned in my paycheck. Shock of all shocks, my signed check had been turned in and was deposited in my account. Thank you God for honest people. I had dropped it on the floor while in line for the teller. Yikes! That was my mortgage, groceries, utilities and all my monthly bills. I was already fearful for how I would manage. Worst of all, how was I going to tell my wife that I had lost our monthly check! What a dork. What an idiot. How could you do that? Don’t you ever pay attention to what you’re doing? That was all we had. How will we get through the month? I had given a great deal of thought to what my answer would be. “I don’t know.”
No comments:
Post a Comment