LOSING IT

I don’t know if you can call this a senior moment, or what a listener called “Sometimers Disease,” but I hid some things, and now I can’t find them. It’s nothing urgent: just some jewellery. Oh, and a sheet of paper with all my credit card, bank and utility account numbers, with passwords and expiry dates. Just enough information to steal my identity, drain my bank accounts, and set up a new life in the Cayman Islands.

I hid them before I left on vacation last month. We hired a dog/house sitter, and while I trusted her implicitly, you never know who might walk your halls when you’re away. It’s not like I have a lot of jewellery, and I wear the important pieces (watch, rings) every day, but there are a few things that should be tucked away, ideally in a vault or a safety deposit box. As for the page with the account info, that should not even exist, but after being hacked last year, I change my passwords and PINS frequently, and I prefer a tangible record of them, in case I forget them or lose them in the Cloud. No, YOU don’t make sense.

Obviously, I was distracted. It was two days after Christmas, and I was packing for a hot weather trip amidst the holiday detritus, dealing with dogs and leftover food and missing bathing suits and passports and foreign currency. It was only as I was zipping up my suitcase that I thought to hide the valuables, such as they are. At first, I tucked them in a drawer, then, realizing this was an amateur move, I decided to conceal them in a far more unlikely place. In fact, I hit upon such a brilliant hiding spot that no one will ever figure out where it is. Including me.

The brain is a funny organ. I can remember entire swaths of poetry, my first phone number (684-4461), what I wore to my first dance (a blue plaid miniskirt and a mohair sweater),  certain scathing things that were said either to or by me, and the names and personalities of every kid who lived on the  street where I grew up  (hello Michael, Lynn, Alison, Sharon and Josie),  but I have no recollection of where I stashed my stuff. The memory is stored in the brain’s hippocampus. I can recall this because when I learned it in biology, I pictured a university for semi-aquatic ungulates. I can remember this, but not where I put my jewellery.

Update: I found it. I found it, and I’m an idiot. After checking in every drawer, inside every purse, under the bed, behind the toilet tank, between sheets in the linen closet, I stood inside my walk-in closet and prayed to St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost items. The, lo and behold, I noticed a shoebox, separate from the rest, sitting on a shelf next to my sweaters.  A bright pink shoebox with – wait for it – a big black star marked on it. It was so obvious, I might as well have stuck a note on it saying “Hi Mister Robber Man! Here’s what you’re looking for!”

So it’s all good. The jewels remain in the family, my identity is still mine, and the hippos have returned to the campus.

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