Lately (or maybe for awhile now) things have been disappearing around my house. Nothing big, and certainly nothing that I use every day, but little things. First I noticed that two t-shirts had gone missing; a grey ringer and a dark blue shirt from the band Duster. Not a huge deal, as both of them had been relegated to the "gym wear" section of the dresser, and hey, maybe they're mixed up in the laundry, right? Then it was a Gang of Four cd (Entertainment!) that could have been left at a friend's house, even though I know for a fact that I brought it in with a pile of other discs (all accounted for), yet it is still nowhere to be found.
Most recently it is a paring knife. A small, ridiculously sharp, bright yellow paring knife that was my favorite of a set of three, and had been a gift from my sister this past Christmas. This little knife lived it's entire life in my care between the knife drawer and the sink, with occasional stops in the dishwasher that I use as a (largely ineffective) drying rack. Never did it stray beyond the kitchen to perform tasks elsewhere in the house. There was no opening of letters or cutting of twine, no fending off of spare-changing hobos or dressing of wild game. No, this knife lived a sheltered life with its somewhat less colorful kin in a radius of basically ten square feet, with very little variation to it's daily routine. However, apparently one day it was there, removing the membrane from a jalapeno (was this when I had it last?), and the next day (or was it days?) it was somehow gone.
Gone or misplaced, that is. I have been known to do incredibly stupid things when not paying attention, and especially in the kitchen. I recently swore a blue streak into the phone when I discovered that I'd put fresh (and organic!) blueberries in the freezer instead of the refrigerator, and god only knows how many things i've found in the cupboard that really, really should not have been there. (Usually discovered before any real damage is done to perishables.) Point is, the knife, the cd, and the shirts could easily all be together in the back of a closet, subconsciously hoarded for some real or imagined apocalypse.
When living alone, you lose the luxury of someone else to blame. There was many a time when I would stomp around the house muttering "stupid Chris", only to discover that it was I who put a bottle of honey on that stack of bills, or it was I who had positioned all of those things just so on the table so that I could so easily knock them off, or that it was I who had thrown away all of those important papers that I left right here on the counter and I need them right now, what did you do with them? I was also typically responsible for my own lost car keys, "what happened to those last six beers", and "what happened to that thousand dollars in the checking account". The answer to all of these being, naturally, "oh".
No, when things go missing and you live alone, you become paranoid. You start sizing your friends up when they come to visit, watching them out of the corner of your eye. You know that it's ridiculous, and that your friends are hardly the type to run off with cds or your gym clothes, but wasn't so and so just complimenting that paring knife, just the other day? Of course, this inevitably goes the way of the "Stupid Chris" game, and you are left with a deep sense of shame (a chasm of shame, really) when you find the knife in the wrong drawer (but who put it there?), or the cd on your desk, or the shirts stuffed behind the bathtub. You wonder just what kind of person you are who would suspect your friends or your partner of running off with your things, or drinking your beer, or putting honey on your papers. Sadly though, you know the answer is likely that you are the person who would run off with a pretty yellow paring knife after drinking all the beer and knocking the magnets behind the fridge. On the way out the door though you may stop and think, "hey, isn't that my copy of Arrested Development Season Two? I've been looking everywhere for that!"
No comments:
Post a Comment