Whenever one of us can’t find something, we say, “It is around here someplace!”
This has not always been effective in retrieving a lost object.
The
earliest loss I remember is my wedding ring, the winter of our first
year of marriage. When I noticed it missing after a trip to the super
market, I was fairly certain we would never find it again. My guess was
that it had slipped off when I took a glove off to get my car keys.
The snow bank was at least three feet high.
The next
memorable loss was in a watery hay stack: the Mississippi River. We
were part of a flotilla of the Minnesota Canoe Association. Probably
for the vanity of not having a white stripe on my wrist, I had set my
high-school-graduation watch on the gunwale of the canoe. One of the
kids asked for Kool-Aid and as I reached for the jug, he or she moved.
Kerplash! No way would I be able to determine exactly where that watch
was.
Books are something that seem to disappear
easily. I remember leaving a copy of “Abbé de Tours” on an airplane. I
lent “Dieu rit en Alsace” (“God laughs in Alsace”) and the borrower
denies having it. I have a vivid memory of John McWhorter’s “Power of
Babel” being on my wife’s night stand. Even buying another copy didn’t
make it turn up.
A “good” place to lose something is
the Essentia Fitness Center. I’ve left behind in the locker room an
iPod, keys, earbuds, and other stuff. In almost every case, somebody
had turned the item in at the reception desk. Sadly, others have not
always been so fortunate.
This winter I lost my cabin
keys in Brimson. We looked in every building and in the car, but could
not find them. Fortunately we could make copies with my wife’s set.
Then the snow started melting and there was a “golden” carabiner next to
the sauna door. Although I am paranoid about making sure that the
carabiner is securely hooked onto a belt loop, I wasn’t paranoid enough
that one time.
A few days before my wife returned our
granddaughter to Japan, she lost her cellphone. She and I asked several
times at every place she had been if anybody had turned it in. I
called her cell phone and all I got was my recorded voice. I went to
the provider’s web site and checked for unauthorized usage. There was
none but I suspended usage anyway. After awhile I removed the
suspension, but I kept checking for unauthorized usage.
We
kept looking over and over in some of the same places, especially the
kitchen counter where she often left her phone. “It’s around here
someplace.”
Halfway through my wife’s trip, I was about a day away from ordering a new phone from my provider or getting one on eBay.
As
I do every few days, I was going to get some more groceries at the
Whole Food Co-op. It is important to mention the place because I had to
determine how many and which of our bags to take. Because we have so
many floppy bags that are difficult to pack, I’m often tempted to use
the Co-ops paper bags. However, we do have two bags with rigid sides. I
selected on of these and then selected what smaller bags and jars I
would need for the bulk items I intended to buy.
When I
got to the co-op and was at the bin for my first purchase, I reached
into the bag for a smaller bag. There were no smaller bags! Nothing!
Nada! Ingenting! How did I miss putting them in? As if wishful
thinking would put them in the bag, I peered into it intently. I then
noticed a red piece of cloth sticking out from the flap that forms a
double bottom.
What is this? A closer look and I was
holding the embroidered zipper pouch that my wife keeps her phone in.
Unzip! There was her phone! Mirabile! It didn’t even have enough
power to show the low-power red line. But, you guessed it, it was
around here someplace.
Several hours later I had it fully charged, functional, and with all her data.
I
emailed her that either she would never take it out of the house with
it off or I would buy a Tile to attach to it. If she has it on and we
have our computers set properly, we can use Find My iPhone to locate it
within a few feet.
I am also guilty of not remembering
carefully where I have put something. We have a charger for AA
batteries that I was sure had been on the kitchen counter. In fact, I
remember clearly that it had been plugged into an outlet above the
counter. As with the cell phone, I kept looking on the counter and in
drawers, but I could never find it.
This past Saturday I
looked in drawers at our cabin for kerchiefs to keep the sun off my
neck. I found a couple in the next to the bottom drawer, but I was sure
there were more. I opened the bottom drawer and there was… the battery
charger.
OK, now where were the batteries that I brought from Duluth to be charged. Nowhere to be found.
When I got back to Duluth and put my laptop on my desk, there were the batteries: “around here someplace!”
Last time Mel looked, his head was still on his shoulders.
Also
published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-04-23 at
http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/04/22/5161_it_is_around_here_someplace
