November 19, 2015

Lost Object Syndrome

I keep a neat little (4 x 6) spiralbound notebook for writing my lists, for taping business cards of  handyfolk, for jotting phone numbers of Customer Service and the reference numbers it generates, for keeping track of books I want to read, music I want to listen to...and quotes that come across my life.  It replaced a rather ad hoc system that involved tearing corners off the nearest electric bill or piecing together shreds of business cards from the lint trap of the dryer.

The single rule is that the notebook can never leave the house. And so it is a brilliant way to keep everything in one place.

Except when you lose it. 

Because everything is in one place.

Because I slavishly follow rules, I know its here somewhere. After a month of looking in every possible and impossible hiding place, I finally gave in and bought a replacement. Much to my sorrow, because I love leafing back through the shorthand version of my life.  I would show you a photo of it...

But I can't find my camera either.

I used to think the thing I hated most about aging was the fumble for reading glasses to see anything smaller than my dogs. But since the glasses have become a permanent facial fixture, I am nominating Lost Object Syndrome in its place.

17 comments:

  1. As a librarian, I used to say "A book mis-shelved is as good as gone." These days I find myself mis-placing things and wonder if it is my mind that I am losing.

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    1. Here's the thing: I don't think I am misplacing my stuff. Wherever I placed it made sense at the time. Perhaps I need to put Dewey Decimal Numbers on everything???

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  2. I live in hope that the two tiny 1mm emeralds stashed in a small bag in a box 5 houses & 25 years ago will come to light....

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  3. i want you to find the original. I KNOW you can. FIND IT!

    The greatest lesson for me in losing was from Alz. B. All the usual, but mostly her purse
    toward the end. And then the whole thing about how "someone" must have taken it.
    Repeat RepeatRepeat...her son bill getting calls at odd hours and often late to work
    because of the purse. Frustration heightens sometimes and once , temper flaired when
    i was already there looking for it and found it yet again and he burst through the door
    with a chain and a carabiner hook and hooked it all to the metal frame of her lazy boy
    chair. There the purse was, chained.
    B stood there, looking, and turned to him and said that's strange, why would "they"
    want to do that?

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    1. Alz Betty was the source of the best stories...but I'm not sure what the lesson is, except that she in the center of the turmoil remains immune to it! I don't know where else to look, Grace, I think it must have gone out with the trash and now someone in the Dept of Sanitation has a great list of books to read. The camera, well, there is always that "someone," isn't there?

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  4. I, too, struggle with Lost Object Syndrome. So does my husband. We are a pair of perennial searchers. The lost things are always under something.

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    1. What kills me is how much time we spend searching for stuff. I must stop that right now!

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  5. Thanks for giving a name to this problem. And I like your idea of having just one place to put all the things that I want to remember. Hope you find your original notebook. Thanks for sharing. cindy

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    1. Hey, Cindy! Yeah, the notebook idea is a real pearl and it is really encyclopedic once you get a few years worth.

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  6. am not there, yet.......usually the things I value turn up, wherever I happened to have dropped them of course.....
    however, members of my household ask me at least once every two days: have you seen x? did you tidy up and put it somewhere else??
    so, so far the LOS affects the male members of my family (and it has started at a young age)

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    1. and also, if I have lost stuff and can't remember it's gone, that could signify I have LOS but don't suffer from it, ha

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    2. Well, the males in my life suffer from LAS, "Lazy Ass Syndrome." As in "get up off your lazy ass and look for it!"

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    3. And yes, you clearly are in deep denial.

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  7. getting there, scissors gone for weeks

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