Stop Looking or Buy Another One: The Eternal Choice

I am forever losing things. It’s probably because I’m not a very tidy person, but I like to think it’s because I’m just really busy. We all know the only surefire way to find something is to stop looking for it or buy another one. A perfect example occurred this past week. 

I’d just had a victorious trip to the local big box fabric and craft store. I’d been wanting to make myself a hoodie from some fabric I’d had for probably eight years (look at me, working from my stash!) and I’d narrowed the pattern choices down to two. I agonized over the choice for a long time. With patterns costing nearly $20 these days, I wasn’t going to just buy both and decide later. I chose one pattern, then days later I regretted my decision. There was no option but to return to the store and buy the other one. Imagine my delight when I discovered due to some inscrutable promotion the store was having, this new pattern was only going to cost $2.11. When the nice guy at the register rung it up, I could not believe my good fortune… my poor pattern decision making skills were only going to cost me two bucks instead of twenty! I dug around in my pocket for a couple of ones and some change and I was on my way! I didn’t even need a bag; I just bought the one thing. That store never has bags anyways, but that is a story for another day. 

I got back home, still giddy from my acquisition. Not wanting to waste gas, I had made sure to do some other useful things on my trip out such as picking up groceries. It was raining cats and dogs, and I didn’t want to make a second trip back to the car, so I grabbed up everything and ran into the house. I wanted to show Train Guy my pattern that was going to lead to the World’s Coolest Hoodie, but it was immediately nowhere to be found. A soggy trip back to the car yielded nothing. How far could it have gone… I literally just walked from the car to the house. I dumped out the grocery bags, looked through all the mail (a pattern kind of looks like mail, right?). Nothing. I made dinner, fuming mad that I’d lost the pattern that was in my hand minutes ago. After dinner, I scoured the car – again. I checked the driveway, which was by then 3” deep in water. The pattern would have been ruined had it fallen on the ground. I didn’t care. I just wanted to know where it was. So, desperate, I even went through the trash. This process repeated 3 or 4 more times that evening, and again the next day. Still nothing. 

I knew the only way to “find it” was to stop looking or buy another one. I could not bring myself to buy another one online for close to 20 bucks, and I knew there were no more at the store, since I had bought the last one. I had to opt for “stop looking for it”, which was harder than a little kid waiting for Christmas. A week passed as I inched closer to spending the twenty bucks just to end the agony. Finally, a routine trip to the mud room revealed a shocking discovery: There it was just sitting face up on the mudroom bench. I grabbed it, ran into the house and started grilling Train Guy: Had he found this? What was it doing on the bench, and why didn’t he say something to me? 

Train Guy was nonplussed, “I saw a piece of paper with some words on it sticking out from behind the cushion”. Apparently, he just took it out, wondered what it was, didn’t know, then simply laid it down on the seat. My jubilance suppressed the urge to say, “You know I’ve been looking for this for days!”. As always, I could not help but reflect on the thought that tidy people will never know the joy of a messy person finding something thought irretrievably lost. 

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