Clever storage places frighten me now for that very reason. I know that the odds are I’ll never find what I’m putting there when I need it.
Arthur? That you?
RR
I lost my social Security card. For years I had carried it in my wallet, it was the same card I got when I was 15 years old, and in all that time, I never lost it. Then, I considered the advice that it was unwise to carry your SS card in your wallet, and decided to put it in a safer place. Some months later, I tried to get my free annual credit report online, and was advised that due to discrepancies in my supplied information, they would need a copy of my SS card in order to process my request.
Of course, having safely stowed my SS card, I could no longer find it. I looked everywhere: file cabinets, desk drawer, sock drawer, all the logical places I could imagine that I would have put it, to no avail. I finally gave up, and never did send away for my credit report.
Finally, months later, I had a need to write a check, something I never do anymore, and what do you know, it was slipped into a slot in my check book. I have no recollection of putting it there, and I’m not sure why I thought that was the safest place I could think of (although I never carry my check book anymore).
I still haven’t applied for my credit report though.
Mines almost like this.
I was so use to walking to work and back in my early 20s that once I got a car, I kept forgetting it. I worked for a local grocery store, I got out of work and walked all the way home. Once I got to my road it felt like someone hit me upside the head. " :smack: Shit. I have a car and it’s in the parking lot…" I turned around and walked back up to the store to get it and drive it home.
I think I did that like 3 times.
Why does everyone always blame Uncle Billy? He was the victim of Mr. Potter.
Getting to work, parking car next to it instead of three blocks away (parking is heinous). Then after work late at night, walking out three blocks and searching all three or four floors of the garage before realizing that my car is parked all the way back at work. :smack:
Because Potter would never have had the chance if Uncle Billy hadn’t forgotten the money was folded inside the newspaper.
Those of you who keep forgetting where your car is parked should take a picture with your camera phone (if you have it) with some identifying feature of the garage or lot in the photo.
Standouts in my life:
Forgot my overcoat when finished with a training course in Columbus, OH in January. That is the worst cold I have ever experienced and I learned then why most of you who live back there hate winter, with special animus directed at the month of February. I didn’t realize I’d forgotten it until the I was sitting on the plane home and we were taxing to the runway.
On another trip I left a keychain I rather liked, that was made of sterling silver, in the rental car. In those days, long before 9/11, it was easy to get in and out of an airport concourse, so I took the shuttle back to the Hertz lot to retrieve it. Although it was less than an hour later, the keychain was already gone.
On still another trip (why do these things happen when I travel?): Flew to Chicago to visit family, and have some good times in the Chicago blues bars. My cousins lived in Deerfield, north of O’Hare. I had detailed directions, and followed them conscientiously. It would have been fine. Really! but I was behind this large truck and missed the signs for several miles. I had almost reached the Wisconsin border when I realized my mistake.
Every so often: forgetting to put the lid on the coffee carafe when turning the coffeemaker on.
<Insert obligatory remark about losing my mind>
I lost my first wife once.
We were in the mall with seperate shopping lists and were supposed to meet in the food court when done. I decided to take my stuff out to the car and stash it, then meet her. But when I got to the car, my brain went on autopilot; I loaded the stuff in the car, got in, fired it up and headed home. Halfway there, I had a “D’OH!” moment. Turned around, went back, went in and got her from the food court. She was astounded that I had left her there. She then laughed like crazy and gave me grief about it for years afterwards.
Are, by chance, familiar with Garrison Keillor’s “Truck Stop” story?
I started making coffee at work one time and neglected one minor aspect: I threw out the old filter, rinsed the carafe and basket, put a new filter in the basket, added the coffee . . . and walked off with the empty carafe in my hand. There was quite a mess on the counter by the time I realized that I was still holding the carafe that was supposed to be catching the newly brewed coffee.
I plead easy distractability. Someone started talking to me about something.
RR
I’ll tell this one on my mother-in-law: She asked me for my method of making chicken stock, followed it, and went to strain her broth. She set the colander in the sink and carefully poured her stock into it.
Right down the drain.
I guess I should have specified the part where you put a pot under the colander?
I’ve lost my birth certificate several times. I know I left it at the DMV once, and possibly twice. My dad once had to go to the Hall of Records in San Francisco to get me a new one, and yet once in college, I had to skip a day of classes to go up to the city from Santa Cruz to get myself a new one so I could order a passport. I was lucky I was born with travelling distance of my school - a few years later I needed my birth certificate for something else, but since I was living in Chicago, I had to order it via mail. This time I ordered two copies, just in case.
I know I have one copy here in BG, but I’m not sure where the other one is now. I hope it’s at my parents’ house with all of my other documents.
I also recently went on a vacation. I bought my bus ticket and promptly lost it. I spent twenty minutes looking for it in all of the pockets in my bag. After annoying the lady at the bus company about issuing me a new one, I found it…in my wallet.
D’oh.
I was sixty when I went to Paris with my granddaughter and my brain turned to pate. This was only two and a half years after 9/11 and as we were preparing for our return to the States, it was natural to have a few thoughts about airline security.
The wicked streets of Paris had been hard on my knees and I was carrying my cane through the airport. As my granddaughter and I checked through the Parisian security, a young woman asked me if I had anything that could be used as a weapon. “Yes! Certainly!” I said.
I was thinking how if any of those wretched terrorists tried to highjack our plane, I would be in there fighting to take them down by clubbing them with my sturdy cane.
The young woman looked really startled and my granddaughter shrieked, “No! Grammy!” And I realized that I had misunderstood the intend of the young woman’s question. Apparently, they didn’t anticipate that I would be needed in battle at all.
Now that I think of it, I do feel a little proud that when the French government needed me, I did not hesitate to join the fight. Not everyone gets to know these things in one’s lifetime.
My Travelcard which I really cannot do without, vanished somewhere between Sunday Night and Monday morning. The place was turned upside down, pockets checked, furniture lifted, piles of paper gone through. Not a sign of it anywhere and I spend the rest of the day at work trying to think where else it could possibly be.
Monday Night, the same routine again as the place is turned upside down and I start having to consider getting a brand new one.
Tuesday morning, I clear one of the wastepaper baskets filled from the night before and there it is nestling at the bottom.
I have no idea how it got in there, but I think it is trying to tell me something.
I’m quite anal about things being in the right place and going through set routines to ensure I don’t lose or misplace things (this gets taken to a frightening extreme when I’m going on holiday - I will check my ticket is in my bag about once every five minutes). I have to hold my keys in my hand when I leave the flat each morning to be satisfied that I haven’t locked myself out as well.
However I managed to lose my Baphomet necklace last week and I’m not sure how. I took it off on Monday night before I met someone as I was wearing an open-necked shirt and didn’t want it to show and put it in my satchel for safe keeping. When I came to put it on the next day, necklace was gone. I literally shook my bag upside down when it was empty expecting the damn thing to fall out, but no luck. The only possible explanation I can think of is that I bought a wrap to eat on the way home and put the wrapper in my bag and during the journey on the train took the wrapper out and threw it in the bin and my necklace may have been tangled up with it some how.
Other than that I’m stumped - maybe it ran away?
My Swiss Army Fieldmaster pocketknife vanished eight days ago. Just wasn’t there in my pants pocket like it was supposed to be. Looked for hours everywhere I could think of that it could possibly be, no luck. Gave up and decided I must have lost it on the street somehow while pulling my car keys out of my pocket.
Today I put on a pair of shoes I haven’t worn since then and it’s in the left shoe.
I can’t even claim I “found” it, more like it “turned up”.
:smack: :smack: :smack:
I don’t do any of this, BUT, when I was in my twenties, I just tossed anything anywhere when I came home, and picked it up again when I needed it, no sweat. Now I have to have a place for everything, and it has to go right there.
I also have to keep a meticulous calendar. I made it all through college, holding down two part time jobs, and never missed a shift or an assignment, and never wrote anything down. I have to write down EVERYTHING now, and check it the day before, the night before, and the day of.
Most expensive: many years ago my husband lost his Cartier watch, which he had when we met; not only expensive but he really liked the style, and they don’t sell it any more. The only thing we could figure is that he left it on the kitchen counter and it got swept into the garbage, which had long since been taken out and collected.
Must frustrating, but no cost whatever except time: I borrow e-books from the library. I have been accumulating a list of authors I like, so as to expedite the borrowing of new books. I have been accumulating this list for months. Now it has disappeared (probably into the garbage again). So I am back to slowly browsing the blurbs to try to find things I want to read.
I am a creature of habit precisely because otherwise I would never be able to find my keys, my sunglasses, or my eyeglasses. I always put them in the same place, except when I don’t, and then fun times ensue. I got a bright red cover for my Kindle so that I would always be able to spot it. I have to (try to) be crafty, because I seem to have no memory for these kinds of things.