Losing Things
Deb said that when she gets busy and stressed, she tends to whack herself accidentally; me, I seem to lose things.
In the last week, simultaneous with the part of the quarter where everything seems to be hitting the proverbial fan, I’ve lost 3 glove liners, a bicycle lock, two readings for the applied ethics class, a pedal dust cap, the coffee cup from my everyday thermos, the “sport nipple” from my backup, several pens, twenty dollars, and a scrap of paper on which I’d written a really good idea for today’s piece, the result being this instead.
Granted, a few of the above were the result of a bit too much beer on last Thursday’s .83 ride, but the others were misplaced in the everyday sober course of events.
It’s the mysteriousness of the disappearances that gets me; one moment, my gloves are right there, in my handlebar bag, the next, “poof!” they’re nowhere to be found.
I try backtracking, visiting stores I’ve been, but to no avail. Shop owners look at me with pity, but they’re shaking their heads at my incompetence, not my loss.
One explanation for these losses is that I’ve simply got too much stuff to keep track of; the universe is just helping me winnow down to what I really need. I know from experience there’s truth in that: for instance, every time I get a backup stash of pens, I end up losing all but one.
At some level, then, losing things is liberating; perhaps as the years pass by and I misplace more and more aspects of my own mind, I will feel freer and freer.
Most losses I eventually come to terms with; I do, however, still mourn the disappearance of this flowered windshirt from the 1970s that I borrowed from my Dad. When I didn’t come back from the ski resort with it, I think we both felt that I had mislaid a part of his youth.
In the last week, simultaneous with the part of the quarter where everything seems to be hitting the proverbial fan, I’ve lost 3 glove liners, a bicycle lock, two readings for the applied ethics class, a pedal dust cap, the coffee cup from my everyday thermos, the “sport nipple” from my backup, several pens, twenty dollars, and a scrap of paper on which I’d written a really good idea for today’s piece, the result being this instead.
Granted, a few of the above were the result of a bit too much beer on last Thursday’s .83 ride, but the others were misplaced in the everyday sober course of events.
It’s the mysteriousness of the disappearances that gets me; one moment, my gloves are right there, in my handlebar bag, the next, “poof!” they’re nowhere to be found.
I try backtracking, visiting stores I’ve been, but to no avail. Shop owners look at me with pity, but they’re shaking their heads at my incompetence, not my loss.
One explanation for these losses is that I’ve simply got too much stuff to keep track of; the universe is just helping me winnow down to what I really need. I know from experience there’s truth in that: for instance, every time I get a backup stash of pens, I end up losing all but one.
At some level, then, losing things is liberating; perhaps as the years pass by and I misplace more and more aspects of my own mind, I will feel freer and freer.
Most losses I eventually come to terms with; I do, however, still mourn the disappearance of this flowered windshirt from the 1970s that I borrowed from my Dad. When I didn’t come back from the ski resort with it, I think we both felt that I had mislaid a part of his youth.
posted by Professor Dave at 7:30 PM
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