Lost & Found

I lose things. Not in a big way. I’ve never left my phone or my keys in a restaurant. I’ve never forgotten the kids at church or a ballgame. The big stuff I can find and keep.

It’s usually the little things, at home or in the car, that seem to get lost in the shuffle. I’ll pull out only one of my favorite socks from the dryer or a recipe I saved will be lost in a pile of other clippings. One of my recent favorites is going to the store to buy a certain item, only to remember the coupon is at home.

Intangibles are easily misplaced. I talk a lot, so bless Big Al’s heart, I lose track of what stories I’ve told, so he often hears them multiple times. I’m particularly fond of retelling my knitting store visits; a topic that I’m sure fascinates him.

I seem to lose track of time more than anything. Events from my 20s seem as clear to me as this morning’s cup of coffee, while something I may have undertaken last month is sometime difficult to remember. My inattention often gets the best of me. Too often I’m thinking about one thing while attempting to complete another, which means I’m never fully focused on either and therefore can’t recall every detail.

A great example is my broken left foot. I was walking down the stairs from the top floor of our house to the living room. My thoughts were centered on the chores I had to do that Saturday morning, first and foremost getting to the recycling center before they closed. At the same time I was watching a presidential news conference where the president of Brazil was speaking for over 20 minutes in Portuguese, without the assistance of any translator for the press corp. It is not wonder I took five steps out of a seven step staircase.

I always knew my day would come when I would be one of those people you read about in the paper who lose a library book and return it 20 years later. So I wasn’t very surprised about a year ago when I found a book of piano music I remembered borrowing from a friend at church. Also I was not surprised when I first thought the “loan” had maybe occurred 10 years ago. But a quick check of my math quickly clued me in to the reality that I had actually borrowed the book of sheet music 30 years ago.

Now the only problem would be finding the old friend.

As is often the case, it’s a small world and all roads lead to home. Through my work activities this winter, I had been talking to someone on the phone whose voice sounded vaguely familiar. A day to two later I got a friend request on Facebook. It was the friend who had loaned me the sheet music.

Winter behind us, I called last week and said I had something of his and wanted to run it out to his office in Joplin. Placing the sheet music on the counter, he instantly recounted the place he had purchased the music and the year he had done so.

Fortunately he had forgotten he had loaned it to me.