Keeping up with the Joneses, or just your own keys and glasses

Published in The Fauquier Times-Democrat, Weekend Edition on Nov. 11, 2011

Every year, when I worked outside the home, I either lost a set of keys, a pair of prescription glasses, or bounced a check.  Last year, I nearly lost my husband to a heart attack.  I think I prefer losing keys, glasses, and my sense of balance on the checking account. 

Someone must have read my thoughts.  So far this school year, I’ve lost a pair of sunglasses.  Oh, and I can’t find my little two-dollar, two-year planner that I used to keep in my purse.  I’m used to having no clue as to what I’m doing, but now, I have no clue when I’m doing it either.  All this, and I’m not even working.  Not really.

I have my phone number in that little planner, so if any honest and kind souls find it, they can call me.  It won’t be like that time my husband and I were newlyweds in college and I dropped the checkbook on my way into the behemoth of a second-hand car we had.  I never saw the checkbook again, though we searched and searched for it and called all the lost and founds.  We wised up and reported the lost checks to our bank so they wouldn’t process any that came through.

A couple of weeks later, we were getting threatening letters from a pizza chain, saying that our check for about $16 failed to clear, and we owed them for that big pizza they had delivered to us, dated the very night I had dropped the checkbook. 

Perfect!  All we had to do was figure out where the pizza was delivered, and we could track down the budding (and well-fed) writer (of forged checks).  I was intrigued by the detective work that lay ahead of us.  Unfortunately, while the pizza company didn’t mind harassing us for $ 16, they did not share my enthusiasm for the detective work we could have done together.  They refused to track down the receipts and the associated data at their headquarters, so we never solved that mystery.  The pizza company decided to let us off the hook for the missing dough.

I could use some detective work now, since I can’t locate either the planner or the sunglasses.  In a way, it is as frightening as it is comforting to think that I have mislaid these things in the house itself.  If it’s lost somewhere in my own home, I may never find it. 

I got defensive when my husband, very kindly and innocently, suggested I just go ahead and buy another pair of sunglasses to replace the ones I had lost.  “Lost?  What do you mean, ‘lost’?” I protested.  “They’re around here somewhere – they’re only misplaced.”  You can’t just throw the term “lost” around, because it has a finality that says, “Never to be found.”  “Misplaced,” that way, is much kinder.  It is a temporary condition.  Even if you don’t have the item, at least you have the hope that you will find it, or it will find you.  Regardless, the sunglasses and the planner have not yet shown up.  I think they are in cahoots – planning something shady, probably. 

At any rate, this just looks bad, because now my husband’s going to think he is right.  It is not just annoying when your spouse or significant other turns out to be right about things; it sets a bad precedent.

Admit it.  There is an undercurrent in most every relationship, whether between spouses, parent-child, or business-to-business that the other person is not quite as smart and savvy as you are.  Sure, they might have more “papers” than you, but when it comes to street smarts, you know, deep down, you are better equipped. 

Now if you could just keep that equipment on you, it would help your case.  A lot.