I was working at a festival in Australia (working holiday, I was basically helping with set-up for a free ticket), and I lost my wristband. I was wearing it when I went to sleep, I was not wearing it when I awoke. It was not in the sleeping bag, nor was it anywhere else in the tent. I even moved the tent in a desperate check underneath, but it had just popped out of existence.
I went to the festival volunteers office to get a replacement, only to be told that they couldn’t issue replacements; due to previous problems with people selling them, you only got one unless you could return the broken one, no exceptions.
However, as it turned out, due to an admin error, I’d been accidentally listed on the system twice, as two separate people, so the other me got one, and kept it for the whole, highly enjoyable, event.
A favorite sweatshirt of mine disappeared. I searched everywhere for it. I hadn’t traveled, I hadn’t stayed at someone else’s home. It never turned up, and there was no way to replace it as the event I had it from was long over.
When I was about ten, I was playing in a pile of dirt on a construction site right near my house - that lovely slightly wet dirt you could dig tunnels in and mound up but not get all that dirty from. The game was building elaborate garages and parking my toy cars in them and then (pre-Calvin-like) having an earthquake make it all come down.
So I dug a tunnel and smoothed and squared the edges, and parked my gray Matchbox Rolls-Royce sedan in it (maybe four inches long?) and The Big One came, and then I dug the car back out.
Or tried to. I dug, and dug, and dug some more, and dug through the piles I’d dug, for more than an hour. I ended up digging away half the pile of dirt (no doubt pissing off the workers the next day, and digging back through my diggings, and I never found the damned car. It was pretty big, and light-colored, and I am pretty sure I didn’t lose track of where I was at, and pretty sure I went through every cubic handful it could have been in… and I never found it.
Knocking on fifty years later, I still wonder about it .
My CT scan CD that shows my kidney stone. I last remember getting it back from the urologist’s office and putting it in my backpack. I can’t find it anywhere. I’ve had the worst experience of my life dealing with it and I never got a chance to see what the object of my torment looks like.
Me too, although the camera wasn’t in a colorful case. It’s not in the box it originally came in–I’ve found that and it’s got other junk in it.
It was the first digital camera I purchased about 10 years ago. I’ve bought another, less expensive camera since, but I often wonder about that first one. It’s got to be somewhere in this house.
This reminds me of the time I lost a key. It was 2007, and I was moving out-of-state. I wasn’t very organized, so I knew I’d be filling boxes and loading the truck at the same time. My father and a couple of my cousins came over to help. I went out and picked up the U-Haul truck I’d reserved, came back, and we started packing and loading. At some point during the endeavor, I noticed the key to the U-Haul was missing. Now, this was a little duplex, and I had the truck backed right up to the front of the building, and all I’d been doing is packing boxes and loading the truck, so the key couldn’t possibly have been anywhere but 1) in the apartment, 2) in the grass or on the driveway between the door and the truck, or 3) in the truck. But despite my best efforts, I couldn’t find it. I wound up having to call a locksmith and get a new key made, and, embarassingly, turn that key into the U-Haul place when I returned the truck.
At first I assumed it must have just gotten wedged down into the bottom of a box, and I’d find it when I unpacked. After all, I thoroughly searched the little patch of grass and driveway (and it was on a big, I’d say 3" by 3" bright plastic tag, making it easy to spot,) my apartment was completely empty when I left, and the truck was completely empty when I returned it, so it pretty much had to be in with my belongings. But I’ve moved 3 more times since then, and despite all my packing, unpacking, and rearranging, that key has never turned up.
I too had a 1/4 tsp measuring spoon which I used so much more frequently than the other sizes that I took it off the ring and kept it separately, and it just disappeared one day. It’s probably been at least 5 years, and I still have the other 3 from that set.
A big envelope with the owners manual and all service documentation for my Harley. It went missing at my last house and I looked all over, hoped it would turn up when I moved but it did not. I’ve thought about selling the bike but it would probably help resale value if I could document that the engine mods were done by a reputable dealer/service center.
Still hoping I will stumble across it someday. I can’t imagine that it could have been thrown out by mistake.
Not me personally, but my family has been looking for my dad’s dog tags (Vietnam) for at least 10 years now. It was thought that they are amongst my brother’s stuff but we’ve been though all his stuff in my basement and still nothing.
We can order replacements online but still dad will not have “his” dog tags. Sad
An expensive pair of sunglasses, at the hospital the day my dad died. I put them down in the restroom and when I went back they were gone.
This upsets me unreasonably, because 1) What kind of sleazebag steals from someone visiting a hospital? 2) The restroom was 2 feet away from a security guard station where they could have turned them in. and 3) They were prescription glasses, so the thief couldn’t even use them.
I had a binder full of Marvel trading cards that was lost in our move when I was younger. It was a small brown, leather binder with a baseball stitched in the front of it. I can see it in my head plain as day. I loved that thing and I loved my cards…poof…gone.
I lost a digital camera after a trip. My parent’s blame me, but I know that it was in the back of rental van when we emptied it, and they said they had it…but they didn’t and now it’s gone.
For a wedding gift we got a nice pen and mechanical pencil set of a very unique design. I used to use them regularly, but over the years they were starting to look worn. So I set them aside in my desk. The pencil has since gone missing. I still have the pen. I have no idea where that pencil is, but I remain hopeful I’ll find it somewhere in the house. It has been missing for at least 7 years.
Two years ago for Christmas I bought my wife a very nice pair of earrings from a local jewelry store. Less than a week after Christmas, they had mysteriously vanished. We went through all the gift boxes, she checked with her daughters to see if maybe one of them had grabbed them by mistake, nobody remembers seeing them.
I’ve had more CDs and movies vanish than I can count. In some instances I still have the case, but the disc is gone.
And one really minor one, although it happens with alarming frequency: I’ll come home for lunch, take the bread out of the drawer to make a sandwich, take off the twist tie, grab a couple of slices of bread, go to close the bread bag back up… and the twist tie is nowhere to be found. It was just here five seconds ago!
I have a set of wood-handled cutlery that I bought for my first apartment years ago. Over the past decade or so, the knives have vanished. I think there were originally eight knives and I have maybe one left. The hell? I live alone, and it’s certainly possible that I’d flake out and toss one of them out with the leftovers, but multiple times?
Also lost one of my favorite pocket knives probably twelve years back. I replaced it, but the company had redesigned the knife – just wasn’t the same It was during a major painting/redecorating project at home, so I keep hoping it will turn up under or behind something that I haven’t moved in a decade.
We bought some stoneware a year or so after we got married - 30+ years ago now. At least 8 teacups.
We don’t drink coffee and rarely drink tea - and that out of larger mugs - so they see almost no use and to my knowledge we’ve never broken one.
Somehow, though, we have exactly one left.
My son had a stuffed rabbit that was his favorite thing in the world. We bought 2 spares.
When we moved, only 2 turned up - the current one plus the one spare we knew the wearabouts of. The other one has never been seen, even though we’ve long since unpacked all reasonable possibilities (the move was 14 years ago). There is no way it could have been left in the old house, we left NOTHING behind there that could have hidden it.
I paid $55 for a Duck Dynasty shirt once. Never have been able to find it in about three years. Maybe it’s hiding with the lost socks…
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Other than my mind, I don’t lose too much stuff, but one thing was a very cool, first edition “board” game (actually a silk-screened scroll) called “Privateer”. High quality material, wood tokens with real paint, etc etc.
No longer available. Long, weird story about the guy who invented it, went bankrupt and insane, legal issues, blah blah blah.
You can get the later editions, which are crap. Plastic sheet, plastic tokens, Junk!
Best drinking game ever!
I “lost” a wallet. I actually know where it is, just can’t get to it. Bottom of a lake. A deep lake.
It was during a major painting/redecorating project at home, so I keep hoping it will turn up under or behind something that I haven’t moved in a decade.