I am the biggest loser I know.
I have done everything I possibly can to lose everything I possibly can. I’ve lost hats, from yarmulkes to baseball caps to beanies. I’ve lost keys, from house to door to bike (twice). I’ve lost umbrellas. Don’t bother asking how many. I’ve lost count. Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, 30 former dollars of mine go unspent.
I have mastered the three ways of losing things: Losing something and not realizing it is lost until it is needed, knowing something is lost and not doing anything about it, and not knowing something is lost until someone notifies you they have found it.
The first example is the most common for me. On almost a daily basis I will spend between 10 and 15 frantic minutes searching for my keys, wallet, bicycle helmet, hooded sweatshirt, backpack and anything else necessary at that moment. If I need it right then, I will not be able to find it.
There are other times when I notice something bigger, such as a bike lock or a vial of pills, is missing and think nothing of it. “It’ll turn up,” I think. Fast-forward to a couple of weeks later when I really need the item, and chaos no doubt will ensue. Couches will be overturned, beds will be unmade and desks will be ripped apart. Every searchable nook and cranny of the house will be raided during the hunt. The hunt has a happy end, however, when the item is found in the most obscure and confusing of places. The bike lock will be found in the hamper, naturally. The checkbook will be behind the toilet, of course.
Third and most confounding of the situations is when I don’t even know something is lost until I get a call or an e-mail from someone telling me that they have found something of mine. Recently, I got an e-mail from someone on campus telling me she had found a bottle of my liver medication in a bush near Willamette Hall. I was astounded. I hadn’t even realized it was missing. I had just assumed that time had flown by all too quickly and I was out of my medication for the month.
Not only do I lose things, I get lost. Frequently.
In my lifetime, I have easily burned $1,000 worth of gas trying to figure out exactly where I am. I make wrong turns. I have mistaken Broadway Street for Broadway Avenue, and I have gone the wrong way down one way streets. I have even, while pondering whether the street I was on was the correct one, sat under a green light for three successive cycles completely oblivious to every passing horn honk, middle finger and obscenity hurled my way.
I cannot go anywhere without a set of Mapquest’s infallible directions. By the end of every summer, there is a ream of these sheets of paper littering the floor of my car. I have even, in one of my more pathetic moments, had to employ a set of written instructions to the Greyhound bus station five blocks from my Barnhart dorm room.
I have tried many different things to remedy my losing ways. I have tried designating a spot for every important thing. I found a spot for my keys, my wallet, my lock, my backpack and pills. That system lasted about a week. By then I was back to losing everything. I even tried making a checklist for everything I need when I leave the house. That idea backfired. I lost the checklist.
By now I have realized that I will never be able to stop losing things. That doesn’t bother me. I usually find what I am looking for eventually. What does bother me is the realization that I have lost something I will never get back. Something, for instance, like my mind.
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