It was both frustrating and puzzling. I looked three times in the bread box, twice in the refrigerator and several times in the bathroom, but I could not find that partial loaf of bread anywhere.
I knew I had put it on the counter. The trouble is, I have found things that I knew I had set on the counter in such places as the bedroom dresser, behind the television in the living room and inside the dryer(don’t ask). I know it is possible for me to hold something in my hand that I intended to put in a particular place and have it never reach that spot. Instead it will end up in some bizarre place and I can’t begin to explain why I put it there.
I know what you’re thinking by now, “Oh, the poor woman, she’s developing Alzheimer’s Disease.” (I hope I spelled that right…I can never remember how to spell the disease that describes losing the memory). You might be right, except that means I have been developing this disease since I was very young.
I honestly believe that instead of suffering with this heartbreaking memory loss, I am suffering from something that I like to call “I put it where it belongs, but the darn Gremlins keep moving it.” When my daughters were young, I used to be able to blame them when the newspaper ended up in the silverware drawer or the roll of toilet paper I intended to put on the holder ended up stashed in the pan cupboard.
Now, my daughters are grown and the only time I can blame someone else for moving things is when my grandsons come to visit. They aren’t too bad, but the little stinkers are always leaving their coffee cups in some weird place.
Okay, okay, so it’s my fault that things are misplaced. It’s not REALLY my fault though. Can I be blamed when I am set to pour myself a glass of milk and suddenly the phone rings and when I finished listening to the riveting canned tirade by some candidate, I’ve completely forgotten the milk? So as I wander away, contemplating the political ruin of our nation, I have not a thought for the slowly curdling dairy product on the counter. More than one container of milk has hit the trash as a stinking, chunky mess in just such an encounter.
Now, what got me started on this line of thought? Oh, yes, I remember. Back to the missing bread. Now, the one thing you must know is that once I start looking for the lost, misplaced or forgotten item, I always find it. I have to get pretty creative sometimes in figuring out where it is, and I have a whole list of unlikely places to search, but I always get it back. Not so the bread.
I began looking in some VERY unlikely places. I inspected the inside of my footstool in the living room—sometimes I hide things from the dog there. I checked the car in the garage, because I had taken some things out there for school. In complete desperation I checked under the bed in the spare bedroom—it would take too long to explain why I chose to look there. However, suffice it to say there was no bread there, but when I remember it again, I’m going to need to take a dust mop to that incredibly dirty floor!
I was in despair. It wasn’t even that I wanted some bread, it was just that I KNEW I had put that bread on the counter and now it was gone. My lucky knack of finding things that I mislaid had finally let me down. Roy walked into the kitchen while I was standing in the middle of the floor, looking dejected.
“What’s the problem?” he wanted to know.
“I think I’m really losing it,” I answered sadly. “I had a partial loaf of bread; I was sure I put it on the counter and now I can’t find what I did with it.”
“Oh, that bread that was on the counter?” he waved a hand carelessly, “I thought that was spoiled, so I threw it in the garbage.”
The garbage. Great, now I have a new unlikely place to look when I’m missing something!
© Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In the Well, 2016. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Jackie Wells-Fauth and Drops In The Well with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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