I’m cleaning downstairs. After this week’s session with Lauren, I’ve agreed to clean the house (well, I agreed to clean my office, but I need to clean the house to clean the office), and I have piles of magazines, books, and papers on the dining room table.
I put the jacket back on The Secret. In the process, I find a stupid adhesive anti-theft strip, peel it off, and take it to the kitchen. On the way, I spot my lovely new notebook. I pick it up, too. I take a few steps, set down the notebook, take a few more, throw away the anti-theft strip.
It occurs to me that I ought to check Amazon to see if they carry this lovely new notebook. I retrace my steps so that I can check the model number. But I can’t find it. It’s not on the dining room table. It’s not on a chair or bookshelf in the library. It’s not in the bathroom. It’s nowhere in the kitchen. It’s not in the living room. (I hadn’t gone anywhere near these rooms, but I checked them anyhow.)
The notebook has vanished. Somehow I’ve managed to hide it from myself.
I am getting old.
Did you check the garbage can where you threw the anti-theft strip?
It’s on the stairs.
I think I’ve managed to hide nearly everything I own from myself at one time or another. I’m somewhat like a squirrel burying nuts all over the forest. He doesn’t remember where the nuts are buried, but if he digs around randomly, he will eventually find one, due to the sheer number and wide distribution of said nuts.
I can never find what I’m looking for, but I always find something that I might have been looking for at one time. I see this primarily as a temporal problem: I just need to cross-reference “looking for” and “finding” for each object in the house, then align those two points in time.
Or maybe if I alphabetize all my belongings….