Now where did I leave my…

I hate to admit it, but I can be a rather “forgetful” person. For years I used to pride myself on the fact that I knew where anything was at any given time. And if I didn’t know, I would find it. Guaranteed.

My Grandma Wellington used to tell me that, when I was staying the night or weekend at their house, if she ever wondered where something was, she would ask me. I would run to the bedroom or wherever the item was, and I would take it to her. Was I hiding things as a joke? I have no idea. I was way too young then and am way too old now to remember!

These days, however, I have to ask my children where certain items are. Sometimes they can help, other times they have no idea or just give me a “Really, Dad, we don’t care” look. In the last few months I have lost my wallet, cell phone and car keys, just to name a few.

The wallet was by far the item that caused the most stress to me and everyone in my household. Not only does my wallet contain some pretty important pieces of identification and financial trinkets (cash, plastic, etc.), but we were leaving for vacation, and having it missing was pretty a big question mark hanging over our trip.

The day before we left on vacation, I went to the eye doctor and then to Kohl’s, so it could have been at either of those places. I did not notice it was missing until the next morning as I was leaving for work. I looked for it as long as I could and then headed out the door.

When I got home that night, I searched the truck, tore the bedroom apart, looked in every square corner of the house that I could think of, and still no wallet. I asked both of my girls if they had seen it, and my youngest, Alexis, who is two, said yes, but that is about all she told me.

Retracing my steps from the day before, I went back to both the eye doctor and Kohl’s, but no luck. My hopes were raised when I asked the worker at the service desk in Kohl’s if a wallet had been turned in. She said one had indeed and asked me for a description. As she pulled it out of the drawer, I smiled. There it was! Much to my dismay, however, it belonged to someone else, and I left the store feeling dejected. I walked all over the parking lot and even went into a few of the nearby stores just to see if someone had turned it in. Nope.

After arriving back home, I again searched everywhere. Suddenly, Alexis opened up one of her toys, and there it was. Whew! The relief I (and my wife) felt was pretty remarkable.

I am not ashamed to admit that I once lost two checkbooks in the span of a few days. Back then it was embarrassing; now I can laugh about it. I had accidentally left one checkbook at Wings Stadium and the other at the Secretary of State’s Office. The reason for the second checkbook … well, I lost the first, and I needed my driver’s license!

After two weeks, the cell phone turned up after I moved our bed. It was lodged between the wall and the bed. My friends don’t call me much, as they know I am not a fan of talking on the phone, so that was not really a big loss.

But this past weekend, something I did not even know I lost was found. After looking for my spare set of keys to my truck, I finally gave up. I had no idea where they could be. My sister-in-law Cheryl surprised me by telling me that my keys were in her console. The funny thing is that they were not the spare set that I had been missing all along. Oh no, they were my original set that had several more keys on it than my spare set that I apparently did not even know I was missing. They had been in her car since at least mid-June. How sad is that!