I had an envelope with $700 cash turn up missing when I was searching for rooms out here in California. One place was wanting cash, so I had it with me to put a deposit down if I liked it. It turns out I didn’t, but I kept the cash handy. Mistake. I go back to the places I’d been that evening, thinking I’d pulled it out and it’d falled with my wallet. Two places and no luck. I’m starting to panic. The busboy at the Thai restaurant thinks he remember seeing a wadded up envelope at my table, but he threw it out for trash. I tell them It’s important, I need it, and eventually he finds it in the dirty linen. Relief. I tell him what it was and tip him $10. He must have looked a good 15 minutes for me.
I’m the anti-Uncle Billy, but I live with two of them. I’m the finder, they’re the losers (so to speak). This is my role in life now, to find minor household items for people who are younger than I am. I’m good at it but I find it bloody annoying, to say the least.
My greatest triumph was finding my stepson’s wallet, after they’d scoured the house for it. I went to the car, felt under the passenger seat and there it was. They’re always leaving keys under piles of paper, shoes in the laundry, and so on. It never seems to occur to them to look under or behind anything.
I’ve “lost” two signifigant items to me. One, my wallet, lies on the floor of Lake Tahoe between Cave Rock and Round Hill. The other, my prized first edition of Privateer is the only thing that I can’t positivly place, but I highly suspect it fell out of my truck while moving, and left my custody on Highway 395 (northbound) between Minden and Carson City.
My wife loses stuff daily. I don’t give her anything anymore. Diamonds, $100 sunglasses (yeah, I know), CD’s, yada yada yada- All gone. I know better now. Shes gone thru more pairs of glasses since we’ve been married than I’ve had my whole life. (I know this because I still have them all and can enumeriate them)
For “gift” holidays, I buy her a tree and stick it in the yard. They usually die, but last a whole lot longer than anything else I’ve ever gotten her. Hell, last year, I actually got to eat an apple off the “Mother’s Day” tree from a few years back. A personal milestone!
Not exactly an Uncle Billy moment, but about 6 months ago I lost my wedding ring, and a plain silver band that I used to wear with it. What actually happened is that they slipped off my finger into the front pocket of a wheeled overnight bag that I took to the office every day. I had been (still am) losing weight and I didn’t realize how loose they had become.
Both rings just turned up this past Monday.
I can’t wear them, though–they are way too big.
I managed to lose the remote to my brand new computer (a Mini, the remote looks like a first generation iPod shuffle and is useful for volume control when you’re across the room studying) when I moved to college as a freshmen; I found it over a month later when the weather finally turned cold and I had to put on my coat.
Turns out I’d been wearing my coat when I was finishing up packing the car; the remote needed somewhere to go so I put it in my pocket.
My brother put his TMNT wallet into the bedside table in the sewing room/guest room at my aunt’s house when he was in 2nd or 3rd grade, and didn’t find it until 6th grade when we were cleaning out the room to turn it into a nursery for my cousin, even though we’d checked all the drawers in the guest room multiple times before.
I’ve never lost anything of value, but I was horrified last night when I went to the kitchen to get a drink in the middle of the night to find the back door left open, with the house keys sitting in the lock. Doh!
Speaking of keys, I do find I’m putting them away in the fridge with increasing regularity…
I occasionally find myself searching for something that’s in my hand. Like, getting all mad and walking around looking for it, going through my purse, etc., only to realize I’M HOLDING IT.
Keys/phone/cigarettes, etc.
I have no explanation other than that I’m apparently in a total fog half the time.
I’ve lost quite a few things, but the one that bothers me the most is my camera. I distinctly remember putting it someplace safe, thinking it was a really clever storage place for it. That was about ten years ago.
I managed to misplace my cellphone last November. I don’t use it often, and the last time I remembered using it was to call a friend to confirm that she was picking me up at the airport. When I realized I hadn’t seen it in a few days, I searched for places I might have put it after I got home, called my friend to see if it might have fallen out in her car, and even called the restaurant we had eaten at on the way home from the airport. This was particularly annoying because I had a trip to Vegas planned for early December, and was expecting to use it to keep in touch with a friend while I was there.
I finally gave up and bought a replacement on eBay, after getting a free activation card for it from AT&T. And then, the day the phone arrived, I found my old phone sitting on a table in plain sight. I know I had looked there before, as next to my recliner and I’m always setting stuff on it. I suspect gremlins. My cat denied having hid it from me in protest for leaving him alone while I was on my trip.
My grandmother’s pearls. 
They were a gift from my mom when I got my Bachelor’s degree. My father had bought them for my mom’s mom when he was serving in Vietnam.
I probably only got to wear them about ten times. I packed them up when I moved from Texas to California and never saw them again.
I have a bunch of 3" CD-singles that are packaged in long sleeves. They are so cute, I love them, and some of them are very rare.
When I moved I packed all my CDs first and I know I packed them all and made sure they got to the new house. I could not find the 3" CD-singles.
About a month after I moved, I had a dream that I opened a DVD box and the 3" CD singles were in it. When I went into my living room the next morning, the DVD box was in the middle of the floor. I opened it and the 3" CD-singles were in it.
I had a pretty common color and kind of car and more than once I would drive by its clone and say “I don’t remember parking there”.
I did that a while back. I was leaving work to go home for lunch, and began to dig in my purse for my car key. I searched and searched, came back inside, set my purse down on the counter, and searched some more. I was just about to head to my office to search the floor to see if it had fallen out of my purse, when I realized that it was in my hand.
I once almost asked my mom, who was bringing me home after we’d spent the day together, to drop me off at the gas station so I could put gas in my car.
I keep my thyroid medication in the cupboard by the sink. Sometimes when I put it back after taking one, I put the glass I used for water in the cupboard with the bottle.
I once lost my replacement work badge ONE DAY after I lost the first one (which I managed to not lose for almost 2 years). Rather than embarrass myself (or raise suspicion) with HR by going back to ask for ANOTHER new one, I copied the design in photoshop, printed it out onto sticky paper, and pasted it onto an old AAA card. I used that fake badge for the rest of my tenure at that company.
Here’s the weird part. The very same night that I was laid off, I came home and was looking at some books on my shelf, and it turns out that my ORIGINAL badge had somehow gotten behind them. I never did find the second badge…
Freshman year of college. I’m freaking out because I can’t find my student ID/meal card. Turning the room upside down, the whole nine yards. Shadez turns to me and asks me what’s wrong.
“I can’t find my fucking meal card.”
“. . .did you check your pockets?”
“Yeah. . .”
I stick my hands in my front pockets. Nothing. Stick my hands in my back pockets. . .
“Oh. . .um. . .thanks!”
It’s a regular occurance for me to find myself on some planet, like Earth, knowing that I’m there for a specific important reason, but I have no idea what that reason might be.
But hey, that’s life, eh?
Yeah, I lost a few things once:
My driver’s license. And credit card. And social security card. And birth certificate.
I’d just moved into a new house and, somehow, lost it all. I had absolutely no idea what had happened to it, but as my sister had stolen some checks from me a few months prior, I was concerned that she intended to commit identity theft against me next.
Several frantic weeks attempting to rebuild my legal identity go by. One day I discovered everything except my driver’s license (which I never did find) had been locked inside of a fire box when I’d been moving, so it would be “safe”. :smack:
I once was cleaning a rifle while sitting on the floor of my parent’s living room. I was in the middle of the room - alone. I laid the cleaning rod on the floor next to me & then reached for it a few minutes later. It was gone. I never did find it. It was THREE freaking feet long. I swear there was a black hole that came by.
I work in a building that has a parking lot with hundreds and hundreds of parking spaces. I usually park in the far corner of the lot with no other cars beside it so that I can see it. Occasionally I will park somewhere else for whatever reason. I always promise myself to make a mental note where I put it yet I never do. It is a terrible feeling to come out at the end of the day and have no idea where your car is.
I have done the same thing twice in two parking lots at huge malls. I had no idea where I parked there either and the situation was even worse. I just had to think back to the first store that I went to and try to deduce the general area where I parked based on that. Half an hour later, I was good to go.
Just a few weeks ago…I drove the vanpool to work. Parked the van, dropped the keys in my briefcase, as always. Go to desk and work work work all day.
At the end of the day, return to the van – and can’t find the keys anywhere. Return to my desk - no luck. Ask security: nothing. Fortunately another vanpooler had keys, and we were able to get home. My wife met me at the van meeting site with spare keys to my car.
The next day I double-check with security to see if anyone had turned in my keys. Still no luck. Search desk again…nothing. And then I finally use an addition 1% of my brain cells, and shake my briefcase. and hear the familiar jingle of keys. When I dropped the keys into my briefcase, the little fuckers had slipped into a almost-completely-zippered pocket on the side.