Monday, June 16, 2008
Missing In Action
How can you know for sure if you're OCD? If you keep a running list in your head of anything you've ever lost, irregardless of whether it's at all useful or not, or even wanted, and you are constantly on the lookout for those items.....well, put a 'Y' in the little box.
I Can't Stand to lose anything. I can't even stand for others to lose anything. Tell me your keys are missing and I'll hunt high and low. You lost a contact, wait, let me get the flashlight, turn down the lights and we can hunt til we're blue in the face. Your debit card, or cell phone, or anything really important, I'll hunt ALL NIGHT LONG. After you've turned into bed you'll hear me tiptoeing around the house, flipping cushions, opening drawers. When I finally give up and go to bed, I'll toss and turn, trying to come up with places I didn't think to look. I'll been known to make people twitch because I Won't Quit.
Here's what's missing in this house right now:
12 dominoes
part of a deck of cards (we rarely play, doesn't matter)
Cindrella movie, I have the case
Case for Jumanji movie, I have the movie
Selah CD
One Cutco steak knife
Six items, all important stuff I can't live without. Doesn't everyone need their dominoes on a daily basis? I suspect when I find any of the first four, I'll find the other three. They're likely all huddled together in a little corner, or wedged in the crease of the sofa, looking out and laughing at me. If you look for something long enough it starts to take on a personality, with annoying human traits. The CD likely isn't with the others, and that thought makes my head hurt. It doesn't matter at all that I have burned a copy of that CD, I NEED the original one, in it's case, on the shelf where it belongs.
I seriously wondered if the puppy ate the cutco steak knife after I heard a similiar story in dog obedience class, but when he didn't show any signs of internal damage, and it didn't show up in any of the places it could or should have, I resigned myself to the fact it probably got scraped off a plate, right into the trash.
Growing up in a house with six kids born in less than eight years, we were constantly losing stuff. Sunday mornings were spent trying to get us all out the door to church, and invariably one of my brothers had lost a shoe. Considering we each had only one pair, how could he lose a shoe? It used to make me crazy, looking for someone else's shoe, so why on earth do I pursue others' missing items now with a vengeance usually saved for boney hound dogs chasing 'coons up trees? Or my dogs, who can be relentless at butt sniffing when anyone else's dog comes to visit. Yeah, like that, only less icky. Alas, I have 'missing in action' issues.
That empty slot on the knife block taunts me. What if the knife is NOT in some landfill, buried under dirty diapers and banana peels and coffee grounds? What if it's at the bottom of the toy bin, or in a drawer within reach of little hands, or in the piano bench I forgot to check, or shoved down in a sofa cushion too deep for my fingers to find, or out in the yard where someone went digging for worms, or maybe it somehow got stuck under one of the car seats, where we found that rotten hamburger meat several days after we'd purchased it, back in August of 2005.
I have NEVER lost my car keys, or cell phone or debit card, or driver's license, or wallet. I did lose one of my children, once, for a few hours, but we found him safe and sound. After calling the police, after driving up and down the streets of our little town, shouting his name out the window, when I walked in the church, and saw him standing there, oblivious to the fact that I was in a half-crazed state, I grabbed him, hugged his scrawny little body to my chest til he started gasping for air, while I burst into gulping sobs, well - what can I say, he had been LOST.
And if I happen to find all twelve of those dominoes shoved down in the sofa cushion, next to the missing cards, smashed up against the Cinderella movie that's inside the Jumanji case, I'm convinced I'll see that the Cutco knife has been holding them hostage, daring them to shout out. If that happens, I'll feel much better. Then I'll go searching for that Selah CD like nobody's business.
I Can't Stand to lose anything. I can't even stand for others to lose anything. Tell me your keys are missing and I'll hunt high and low. You lost a contact, wait, let me get the flashlight, turn down the lights and we can hunt til we're blue in the face. Your debit card, or cell phone, or anything really important, I'll hunt ALL NIGHT LONG. After you've turned into bed you'll hear me tiptoeing around the house, flipping cushions, opening drawers. When I finally give up and go to bed, I'll toss and turn, trying to come up with places I didn't think to look. I'll been known to make people twitch because I Won't Quit.
Here's what's missing in this house right now:
12 dominoes
part of a deck of cards (we rarely play, doesn't matter)
Cindrella movie, I have the case
Case for Jumanji movie, I have the movie
Selah CD
One Cutco steak knife
Six items, all important stuff I can't live without. Doesn't everyone need their dominoes on a daily basis? I suspect when I find any of the first four, I'll find the other three. They're likely all huddled together in a little corner, or wedged in the crease of the sofa, looking out and laughing at me. If you look for something long enough it starts to take on a personality, with annoying human traits. The CD likely isn't with the others, and that thought makes my head hurt. It doesn't matter at all that I have burned a copy of that CD, I NEED the original one, in it's case, on the shelf where it belongs.
I seriously wondered if the puppy ate the cutco steak knife after I heard a similiar story in dog obedience class, but when he didn't show any signs of internal damage, and it didn't show up in any of the places it could or should have, I resigned myself to the fact it probably got scraped off a plate, right into the trash.
Growing up in a house with six kids born in less than eight years, we were constantly losing stuff. Sunday mornings were spent trying to get us all out the door to church, and invariably one of my brothers had lost a shoe. Considering we each had only one pair, how could he lose a shoe? It used to make me crazy, looking for someone else's shoe, so why on earth do I pursue others' missing items now with a vengeance usually saved for boney hound dogs chasing 'coons up trees? Or my dogs, who can be relentless at butt sniffing when anyone else's dog comes to visit. Yeah, like that, only less icky. Alas, I have 'missing in action' issues.
That empty slot on the knife block taunts me. What if the knife is NOT in some landfill, buried under dirty diapers and banana peels and coffee grounds? What if it's at the bottom of the toy bin, or in a drawer within reach of little hands, or in the piano bench I forgot to check, or shoved down in a sofa cushion too deep for my fingers to find, or out in the yard where someone went digging for worms, or maybe it somehow got stuck under one of the car seats, where we found that rotten hamburger meat several days after we'd purchased it, back in August of 2005.
I have NEVER lost my car keys, or cell phone or debit card, or driver's license, or wallet. I did lose one of my children, once, for a few hours, but we found him safe and sound. After calling the police, after driving up and down the streets of our little town, shouting his name out the window, when I walked in the church, and saw him standing there, oblivious to the fact that I was in a half-crazed state, I grabbed him, hugged his scrawny little body to my chest til he started gasping for air, while I burst into gulping sobs, well - what can I say, he had been LOST.
And if I happen to find all twelve of those dominoes shoved down in the sofa cushion, next to the missing cards, smashed up against the Cinderella movie that's inside the Jumanji case, I'm convinced I'll see that the Cutco knife has been holding them hostage, daring them to shout out. If that happens, I'll feel much better. Then I'll go searching for that Selah CD like nobody's business.
Labels: Silliness
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