well, some 25 years ago a migrated to this country with 2 blue big Samsonite suitcases (i literally had my whole life packed into 2 suitcases).
One of those suitcases I still use for longer trips, etc… the other … I have lost (no, not the airline or so … some day it was just no longer around)!
How can you lose a big-ass blue suitcase??? I have no idea.
so, what stuff has left your personal orbit for good?
(must be above the “one sock” threshold to qualify)
I’m very OCD so losing anything puts me in a near-panic. Therefore I almost never lose anything – I’m racking my brain to think of something I lost that was big, but can’t.
However, I have lost important things that I had taken pains not to lose. All of these were years ago and they still bother me:
A Nazi Germany Reichsmark coin. It was in a sealed envelope in tiny drawer in my roll-top desk. I realized one day it was gone. Simply gone. The drawer was empty. To this day I have no idea what happened to it. It was given to me by a cousin of mine who aquired it while on vacation in Germany; I’m still quite bummed that I lost it.
Similarly, an uncirculated $2 bill from the 1976 Republican National Convention. It was in a little carboard holder thing that was tucked into a dictionary. I had that for ~30 years and one day I pulled the dictonary to look up a word (I still remember the word, panglossian) and it was gone.
A check. We had recived a check from a Dr.'s office because we had overpaid a bill. I put the check behind the vanity mirror on the sun visor of my car where I keep the registration and insurance cards. I went to the bank to deposit it and it wasn’t there. I have no idea what happened to it.
A set of keys for my in-laws house. Always kept in the same little bowl on a bookshelf. One day they weren’t there. Never did find them.
I would still love to know what happened to my glasses 20 years ago. I went out on a Monday night snowshoeing on the local golf course, and I know I had them then, and I know I drove home with them. And the next morning they were nowhere to be found. Most mysterious. And aggravating as well.
The one that bewildered me the longest:
My ex had one of those sliding dimmer switches for her main overhead lights, right by the apartment door:
I came into the apartment with a wicker basket full of folded laundry and clipped the plastic slider with the edge of the basket and the plastic thumb slide button went flying. (underneath it are two metal prongs that it attaches to).
I saw the arc of its trajectory, sailing into the apartment. Spent 20 minutes looking for it w/o success, but said to my then-partner, “Well, it will turn up. It’s an efficiency apartment, there’s only one room, besides the bathroom. When we clean or move furniture around it’ll turn up eventually. And it has to be right around the murphy bed or these side tables.”
Never found it. Some eight years later, finally bought a replacement switch just to get the little plastic tab to stick on the damn thing.
I also had a couple of favorite garments disappear into the ether, but I moved a lot between 1998 and 2010 and I assume they got lost in the move-shuffle.
You think losing a suitcase is a head scratcher? We lost an entire Javanese gong stand a few years back. The photo is quite accurate (same type of dragon carvings on ours) but we did not lose the gongs, just the wooden parts, when some things were shipped to us. We could not BELIEVE they had gone missing, but we asked the storage facility where they were supposed to have been kept, along with the other items that were shipped to us, whether somehow they had gotten left behind.
The storage facility said they doubled checked, and that the stand wasn’t there. Given the size of the thing, we reluctantly believed them and had a new one made. (The insurance company was tremendously relieved when it turned out to be quite inexpensive - I’m sure they thought it would be a fortune, but teak is plentiful and labor is cheap in Indonesia).
For years we were mystified, but finally the mystery was solved. It turned out that the storage facility folks were apparently incompetent enough that not only could they forget to pack up a really, really big item, they could then fail to notice for years that it was still there.
So now we have an extra. Anybody need a gong stand?
I once lost the round grate over the front burner on my gas stove. It just disappeared one day. I thought I was losing my mind. Then a week later, it appeared at the bottom of a large pot of clam chowder. Then I really thought I was losing my mind. I’ve done really dumb things before, and forget a lot of stuff, but why would I put the burner grate inside a pot of clam chowder??? Did I black out?? I literally had tears in my eyes thinking about what was wrong with me to have put the grate in the chowder.
Several months later, I used the large pot again, and I inadvertently discovered that when I set the pot lid down next to the pot on the stove, the lid exactly fit the diameter of the burner grate next to the one I was using. So when I had set the pan lid down on the grate, it stuck inside the lid, and somehow I managed not to notice the vastly increased weight of the lid+grate when I set it back on the pot. When the lid went back on the pot, the burner dropped off and sank to the bottom of the pot. Mystery solved! Not completely crazy, just completely distracted, I guess.
I was wearing a pair of diamond earrings. They weren’t huge or very valuable. Except to me. I frequently touched them when I wore them. Because I was nervous about losing them.
I went out for a grocery run. I know the earrings were in when I looked into the rearview mirror.
I got home. Put the groceries away. Took off my shoes. Took off my sweater. Sat down and reached up. Left earring missing. I just knew it was in/on near my sweater. Nope. Back tracked. Searched the floor. Searched my shoes and socks. Nope.
Went to the car. Searched. Nope.
I decided well, that’s that. It’s gone.
A couple weeks later I was getting a brown paper sack off my laundry room shelf and something hit my foot. There was the earring.
Any other day someone else would have been getting a sack and totally missed it.
Pure luck.
I can’t tell you how many things I can’t find. I know they’re in this house. But they are just hiding from me.
The Lil’wrekker still blames me for a lost pair of pink flip flops.
Then again, I have the same hairbrush since grade 9 and a pair of shorts I still wear that are at least 20 yo.
I had a nice vape pen. I was using it one day and set it down. A while later I went back to where I thought I had put it and it wasn’t there. Ok, maybe I absent-mindedly put it somewhere else. I looked in all the likely places, all over the house, where I could possibly have put it, but no luck. Oh well, I hadn’t left the house so it’s still here somewhere, and it will eventually turn up, right? That was 4 years ago and it’s still missing.
Just today I ordered a new Leatherman multitool because my old one has mysteriously vanished. I haven’t seen it in a couple of months. I’m sure it’s still in the house somewhere, and now that I’ve ordered a new one I’m expecting it to show up any day now.
Back when SDMB decided to offer premium memberships there were a number of people who for various reasons couldn’t buy them. I offered to pay for somebody’s membership, and as a Thank You they sent me a set of German Euro coins. Somehow I lost track of them, and have no idea where they went. I’ve moved twice since then, and I keep hoping that at some point I’ll empty out one of the unpacked boxes of odds and ends that I haven’t gotten to and they’ll turn up.
My Mom bought me a Shogun Warrior (It was Raydeen) at a garage sale. It was solidly made of heavy duty plastic and over 2 feet tall. I played with it a lot. One day it vanished. My parents would never have thrown it out. I didn’t. To this day it mystifies me.
Speaking of bags, I have a lovely soft carry on bag I used when I went to conferences, etc.
One day is just wasn’t there.
Years pass. Then I found out that FtGKid2 and borrowed it and forgot to return it. I eventually recovered it and I still have it. It’s at least 40 years old now.
During a move about that long ago one box disappeared. I didn’t notice it was missing for a while so no possibility of the moving company tracking it down.
It contained a lot of old code I had written and other computer related stuff. It also had the complete first two years of Heavy Metal.
Speaking of graphic publications. I have a bunch of silver age DC comics. Including the first “new look” appearances of Batman. I notice when the Batman Returns, etc. came out that those was worth some money. I went to check on them. Gone. Other issues around them I still have.
Back when I played jazz in public I used my trusty Real Book, the illegal version mind you, 3rd Edition. After they got legitimized by Hal Leonard, copyrights secured, and corrections made, the illegal versions (which you used to get under-the-counter in music stores, or from a friend) disappeared. Then my personal copy disappeared somehow, and it’s a real shame – that thing was a relic of a different era and I miss it very much, with all its errors. (You still hear jazz bands playing wrong chords and rhythms on certain standards because of that book, but since repetition legitimizes, the “wrong” way is now right.)
The legal version looks just like the old one, but it’s not the same.
My wedding ring. It was actually my wedding ring and engagement rings soldered together. Both sapphire.
98% sure it was stolen. We had some contractors in the house and I set it down on a table and came back later and it was gone. Tore the house upside down. Talked to the manager. Never found it.
For a long time I didn’t have a wedding ring. Then my husband got an expensive watch as a gift and he didn’t want it. So we returned it to the jewelry store in exchange for my new wedding ring. Worth a LOT more than the original. But I miss the old one.
I managed to lose a baseball bat in this house. It’s not a large house and it’s not as though a baseball bat is a small item but it’s been missing for years and I still haven’t located it. Full sized wooden bat. I don’t need it (it was property of an ex who left it when she left) but it’s curious in its absence.
Less surprisingly, I had a set of earbuds in a case that went missing off a table. That’s not super exciting; I assume the cat batted them off. But they’ve been missing for about a year now through many cleanings (and multiple deep cleanings) of the room plus the whole “tear the place apart trying to find them” phase and they never showed up. When I replaced them, I made the usual “Now I’ll find the old ones a day later” jokes but I never did… they’re just gone. I’m super careful with the replacement pair and where I leave them.
A Kindle e-reader. It was in a beautiful Oberon Designs leather cover. I had it in the family room. Didn’t take it upstairs or anything. And a day or so later I simply could not find it.
Nobody was in the house who might have stolen it, and we’ve torn that room (and our bedroom) apart trying to find it. It’s been 6 years or so and it still has not turned up.
I don’t mind the Kindle, I want the case!
My first e-reader was a Nook, also in an Oberon case. I had it with me at a waterpark near home. I stuck under a pile of towels then went into the water. Later, I went back to my belongings, and after a bit realized it was nowhere in sight. My theory is that someone saw me using it, thought it was an iPad, and stole it, then realized they’d gotten something essentially worthless and threw it all away.
I loved those Oberon cases, but clearly I am not meant to own one.
Other things: my son’s stuffed bunny. When we realized he’d chosen it as his lovey, 29 years ago, I immediately bought several spares. One simply disappeared from our old house. It didn’t turn up when we moved, even. I have to assume it got tossed by mistake at some point.
And a point-and-shoot camera - this was film, not digital, 22+ years back. I have suspicions about it possibly being stolen by some people who were in the house.
In the early 1960s, I owned a Fireball XL_5 toy.
THE TV SHOW {LINK}
A SURVIING COPY OF THE TOY. {LINK}
One day, it was just gone.
I never took it out of the house.
I never saw it again.
These stories are reminding me of a story of something amazingly found - losing it was not so surprising, because it was a hard contact lens, back in the day when people still wore those things.
A lens popped out while I was in my dorm - as an experienced wearer of hard lenses, I was used to searching for them and finding them. (I wore the same pair for something like 10 years - yes, they would get lost, but I would always locate them eventually.)
But this time, no luck. It was just a small dorm room - you’d have thought I could have found it. After three days passed, I was resigned to its loss.
I had a velcro “dart board” on my closet door, and the “darts” were fuzzy balls that stuck to the board. I was playing with it and picked up one of the balls from the floor … lo and behold, my missing lens was nestled into the fuzz.
I think it’s cool! If I had the room for it, I’d buy it from you and find a use for it.
Not me, but a girl I went to high school with was the granddaughter of an immigrant who came through Ellis Island (same as me!). He had a steamer trunk that came with him, but wasn’t there when he disembarked. Fast forward about 70 years, and this friend went to work at a giant warehouse-sized antiques mall that had opened locally. After she’d been working there for a little while, they got a big shipment of old steamer trunks. Lo and behold, there was her grandfather’s trunk! They gave it to her.
And I’d probably just give it to you, perhaps in exchange for a small donation to the arts and culture organization I’m affiliated with. But unless you are in East Hawai’i, the shipping cost would be insane!
Oh is that how it works? My son had a stuffed squish mallow lightning McQueen. Obsessed with that thing, he was. Called it “Beep Beep.” So I bought a spare… which he found. Now we’ve got “Beep Beep” and “Another Beep Beep.” They go with him everywhere. In the car. At the table (their own seats, of course.) They must even accompany him to brush his teeth. I hesitate to buy any more backups!
