Losers

A rambling stream of consciousness on lost items and the losers who lose them:

If we're friends on Facebook, you're aware that one of our cordless phones has gone missing. We have two interchangeable handsets: one upstairs and one downstairs in my office. The batteries are so worn out on each of them that I frequently swap them; one phone usually won't last me the whole day in my office. Leave it off the charger? Well, that's bad news.

The beauty of the cordless phone is, of course, also its weakness. You've never lost an old-fashioned, wall-tethered phone, have you? It's not possible.

At some point in cordless phone history, manufacturers became aware of the tendency of the handset to go AWOL, and added the "find the phone" button to the base unit. It's pretty simple: just push the button, and the missing handset starts to beep like crazy, thereby saving, minutes, hours, or in our case, theoretically even DAYS of searching. A wonderful innovation...as long as the battery is not dead in said phone.

The problem is, I couldn't remember that I needed to press the "find the phone" button when I was in proximity to the base. You see, the one handset that isn't missing, has been in my office because a tax accountant does have some need of a phone this time of year. Since one phone was right there on my desk, it didn't really register (at such a convenient moment) that I should push the button. I would remember when I was upstairs, with a need to use the phone, but, I guess that's when my cell phone would come in handy (assuming it wasn't lost at that moment).

I finally got around to pushing the handset locater button yesterday. Guess what. My phone that won't keep a battery charge for 5 hours...won't keep one for 5 days either. There was no beeping. The phone is still missing.

No, PW, I don't think it's in the barn.

I hear my mom's calm, logical voice inside my head, just as clearly as if she were standing next to me, "Think back to the last place you saw it..."

Oh, wait, that's not her voice; that's mine.

A dozen times a day, John and I have the following conversation:

John: "Mom, can I have some apple juice?"

Me: "Yes, where is your cup."

John: "I don't know."

Me: (patiently) "Think back to the last place you saw it..."

John: "I don't know!"

Me: (less patiently) "Go find it. We're not starting a new sippy cup every time you want a drink. Only one cup per day; that's the rule."

John: whine, whine, whine, whine

Me: "Go look for it if you want a drink."

John: more whining

Me: I start looking for it, while he goes off to do something totally unrelated, largely unproductive, and entirely unlikely to result in location of above-referenced sippy cup. I finally give up, with the realization that the 20 minutes I've spent looking for the damn cup will not result in 20 minutes of time-savings from not having to wash an extra sippy cup that will serve as proxy to the cup that theoretically still exists somewhere in the house and will at some point, with enough searching, be located, albeit full of chunky, foul-smelling milk, or fermented juice .

When something is lost, I think of Uncle GAR. (not my uncle, the boys' uncle) Uncle GAR is good at losing things. Keys, hat, sunglasses, wallet, cell phone...nearly every time he and his long-suffering wife are home for a visit, it seems the weekend ends with the same scene: Auntie MAR making repeated trips to load the car, while GAR frantically searches for this, that, or the other (sometimes it's this, that, AND the other).

By virtue of being prone to losing things, Uncle GAR is very good at finding things. I think his secret is persistence. He doesn't give up; he looks until he finds it.

The night before John's big surgery...his exploratory laparotomy with excision of retroperitoneal mass...I was panic-stricken. John's Marian medal had gone missing. It had been given to him, along with one for me and one for Matt, when he was first diagnosed. It said "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee." I pinned it to his onesie every day using the safety pin that held the ends of his broviac (central line) in place. And at night, or in the hospital, while his central line was accessed (negating the need for the safety pin), I pinned the medal to his silky green blanket.

Because we had to be at the hospital very, very early for surgery, we were staying in Columbia at Uncle GAR and Auntie MAR's house. That evening, when we discovered it was missing, we all looked and looked for it, to no avail. All four of us, but especially Uncle GAR. We finally gave up and went to bed without having located it.

So we left for the hospital the next morning without it.

In the PICU, following above-referenced exploratory laparotomy.

I don't remember exactly when, but sometime that day (I think that morning before he went to work), Uncle GAR found it. It had mistakenly been thrown away with the medical supplies we had used to flush his broviac the night before. Yes, Uncle GAR had dug through the trash to find it. You know...it's always in the last place you look...

Thank you, Uncle GAR and St. Anthony.

John with Uncle GAR and Auntie MAR

Playing at the grain bin job site

I still haven't found the phone, but when I was looking for it this evening under the couch, I did find something else that had been missing...PW's gum boots. So, maybe we'll call it a wash.