I think I would have made a fairly good detective. Except for the part that I wouldn’t like being a detective. Other than that, I feel pretty strongly that I could have, at the very least, mastered the finding-things part.
When I was a kid, I was regularly recruited to scan the bathroom floor for my mother’s contact lenses. She had an uncanny knack for dropping those tiny, fragile, clear discs onto the neutral colored tiles. Unfortunately, my mother hated glasses and so did not have a backup pair for these situations. Essentially blind, she would call me to her aid.
I had always assumed it was because I was the youngest child and the older two would have simply instructed me to go in their stead. And my father, well, he’s not really known for his skills at finding anything. I often suspected it was because he knew if he succeeded, he’d be expected to come through at some other time in the future. But now that I am an adult and have observed his skill (or lack thereof) at locating that which is lost, I fully believe he’s completely incompetent.
Anyway, I always took the job seriously and therefore, always found the errant lens. I reasoned that if it had fallen onto the floor, it must still be there.
Sadly, as I mentioned, without her corrective lenses, my mother does not have even marginally decent vision. So her insistence that the contact had hit the floor was often misguided. Or to put it another way, she had no idea where the hell it had gone because she couldn’t freaking see.
More than once, I found it somewhere on her person. Sometimes, the contact was stuck to her finger. Other times it was lying on her collar, or stuck to her sleeve. It was even possible that the lens was actually in her eye, just not where she wanted it to be. Those were my favorite times.
The situation was usually pretty tense so I never asked, lest I get grounded for life – and I’ve never worn contacts so I probably should just quiet down – but really? How could that not have caused some type of sensation? If one of my own eyelashes so much as touches my eyeball, I am clawing at my face like I’ve been pepper sprayed.
Needless to say, not only did I learn every chip, discoloration or imperfection in that 1970s tile floor, I became quite proficient at finding all the lost things. Aside from saving my parents thousands of dollars in contact lens replacement fees, I clearly remember earning a dollar for being the first of my many cousins to find my grandmother’s lost pearl in the backyard. However, I assumed it was just a natural characteristic of all women and did not consider myself any different than my figurative (and literal) sisters.
In the early years of my marriage, the women-find-things-and-men-cannot-find-things idea was reinforced when I married my husband, who can barely find his own feet at the bottom of each leg.
“Where are the spoons?” (In the silverware drawer)
“I can’t find my socks.” (They’re in the sock drawer)
“We have no milk.” (It’s in the refrigerator)
“No, we’re out of milk.” (Top shelf, right side, midway to the back)
“Oh, well you didn’t tell me you were hiding it.”
“Have you seen my phone?” (You’re talking to me on it)
One can reasonably understand why I think that the Find My iPhone app should be available for every item my husband owns. Even he regularly wishes that he could just call out for Siri and have her answer, “here I am, idiot.” OK, I added that last part, but this happens all the time. It’s a little frustrating.
And they always turn to me. Every one of these people with whom I live seem to be incapable of seeing that which is in front of their face. My son recently told me that they should hire me to find the lost Malaysian airliner that has been missing for over a year.
“You would have found that thing in, like, an hour.”
I don’t know that I’m better than the world’s most sophisticated GPS system, but I do know that I have specifically told people that (insert missing item) is behind the couch pillow (a favorite of theirs that makes me want to throttle each and every one of them) or under the wet towel on the floor in their bedroom or on the table, only to be told it’s not there.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I checked. It’s not there.”
And yet, as soon as I move the pillow or pick up the wet towel or simply glance at the table, there it is.
“Well you didn’t say the kitchen table. I thought you meant the dining room table.”
There are exactly two tables in my house. They are exactly 23 feet away from each other. One would assume that if one didn’t find a missing item on the first table, just out of sheer curiosity, one would check the other table. However, we all know what happens when we assume.
So this general, seemingly inborn, inability of my people to find things has shattered my gender stereotyping. My daughter is just as helpless as the menfolk, if not more so since she loses multiple items per day. And invariably, the lost item is in the same place as it was the last time. I don’t even understand how this hasn’t occurred to her yet. But, I also don’t understand how she could lose her math textbook four times in one day. I guess we all have our weaknesses.
My weakness is the inability to keep quiet when faced with their weaknesses, “Seriously? You really didn’t see your coat on the back of the chair? Where you left it? Which, by the way, is NOT where coats belong!”
“You didn’t specify which chair.”
This is why I drink.
And when I drink, I think I might start wearing earmuffs, so I can’t hear their cries for help. Fashion.wonderhowto.com has a great video tutorial on making your own with a coat hanger. Bonus idea, they suggest using an old stuffed animal for the fabric. If you now have, or have ever had any kids, I’m sure you have too many stuffed animals. That’s some quality multi-purposing!
Laurie Nigro, a mother of two, is passionate about her family, her community, and natural living. Laurie resides in downtown Riverhead and is co-founder of the River and Roots Community Garden on West Main Street.
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