At times I feel like a loser.   But I am getting better.

I bought a new pair of reading glasses about six months ago that I carry with me to the office every day and then back home.  I am surprised that I have not lost them yet, though they once fell out of my pocket in Grand Central and someone kindly picked them up and tapped me on the shoulder.  I also once left them at my daughter’s apartment and going home felt my pockets and were certain they were lost.  “I knew I would lose them,” I muttered to myself on the train home, slapping myself on the forehead.  She called later and said they were safely resting in the baby stroller.

Since I got my cool Ray Ban sunglasses four years ago I have not yet lost them.  That is a miracle.  I have lost or sat on many sun glasses.  Maybe because these are Ray Bans I am a little more careful with them.   Or maybe because I am a big boy now I am more responsible with my things.

A box with my high school and college reports and papers seems to be missing.  That is a mystery.  It is easy to misplace a nice pen or glasses, but how does a box disappear?  The only explanation can be that it was thrown out by mistake.  That makes me sad.   I have had that box for thirty five years.  I try to console myself by saying that it was just a box of stuff.  But I liked that stuff, so I am still sad.

I am constantly losing papers.  I implement a system in my office for making sure I save things, and just as important that I know where they are.  The problem with paper is it all looks the same and it is easy to misfile or unwittingly throw it away.  Since most everything is on the computer these days, I can usually reprint it.  But I am pretty much cursing almost daily when something seems to be missing and I could have sworn that I just had it somewhere.

The key to finding things is to look first in the place you would look last.  Lost usually means misplaced, or even left somewhere, like umbrellas.  Unless you are talking about the cover to the box of the plastic  Frankenstein model autographed by Boris Karloff (in my presence I might add) that somehow disappeared between my childhood and the time I went to college.  Wonder how much that would have fetched on eBay.  And what ever happened those nice cufflinks with my initials on them?