By Dorothy Rosby
Well, I’ve done it again. I’ve misplaced my cellphone. When I’m home, I keep it on my desk. Except when I don’t. And apparently I didn’t. Thus begins a frantic search, some variation of which I undertake practically every day and sometimes twice a day for all manner of misplaced items.
Step 1: I dig through the piles on my desk a second time. It’s so unusual for me to put things where they belong that even saying they belong there is a stretch. Consequently I don’t always look there as carefully as I should. On rare occasions I’m thrilled to find something I thought was missing right where it belongs.
But not today. I do, however, find my car keys and the lid to my food processor, neither of which I even realized were missing yet.
Step 2: I race through the house looking in all the places I’ve been known to put the missing object until I got around to putting it where it “belongs.” In the case of my cellphone, that’s a very long list, including but not limited to my kitchen counter, dresser, bed, coffee table, purse and the pockets of every jacket I own. Then I look in all those places again. You’re probably thinking that if it wasn’t there the first time, it probably won’t be the second time either. And you’d be right.
Step 3: I look in all the places I haven’t been known to leave it—yet. There are fewer of those than you might think—closets, kitchen cupboards, dresser drawers and the refrigerator and dishwasher. This might seem like a waste of time to you, but I once found my phone in the garbage can in the garage so it seems unwise to limit the scope of my search.
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