“Hey Hon, have you seen my…?”
“They are wherever you left them.”
It is an exchange repeated so often in our household that it has become the mantra of our marriage and to be honest, it is mostly me doing the asking and mostly my wife doing the answering.
In this case it was my scissors.
I was asking about the industrial grade shears that I use for opening hard plastic packaging – which I set down less than a minute ago – and when I say a minute, I do not mean a vague moment. I mean less than sixty seconds ago.
Now I can’t find them.
They did not walk off by themselves – although I will not rule that out – rather I most likely set them down somewhere and for the life of me, I can’t recall where.
I was opening a package of LED lights in our kitchen, a kitchen that is unusually clean in anticipation of company, so I did not lose the scissors in the typical clutter.
Still, I managed to do it and had to yell to my wife for assistance. I did not call her out of the hope that she knew where they were, rather I called her to invite the humiliation that is the cost for finding anything in our household.
“If you would just put things where they belong,” she shouted back across the house, “you would find them.”
I do not believe her.
I have tried that.
The place where the scissors belong is in a large clay crock that rests on the counter on the far side of the refrigerator.
They are not there.
An alternate place where the scissors belong is in the junk drawer. I can’t honestly say they are not in the junk drawer, because one can never fully search the drawer. It is such a mess that it defies most human efforts in that regard.
Still, I looked.
The other place they belong is in the shed on my workbench. The shed is too far from the house for me to have walked there and back in less than a minute so I doubted they could be there – still I ran as fast as I could to check – just to be sure.
No such luck.
The other place the scissors belong is under the dining room table. I do not put things there myself – but the cats do and I would not put it past them in this instance.
Not there either.
In desperation, I asked, “Where do I typically lose things?”
“Check the refrigerator.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, you always leave things on the milk shelf when you dig around for a snack.”
I will never admit it is where I found them but I will admit it never hurts to ask.
Almost Iowa 
I have an odd habit of leaving things on the ground. Unfortunately, I have left scissors on the ground. Please don’t remind me of the great “Toe Incident.”
Oooph…. I have similar, never to be discussed, stories.
Visiting from No Facilities, and I can see why Dan likes your writing. 🙂 The older I get the more I try to be organized and leave it in an ‘obvious’ place so I can find it. The only problem is I forget my thought process around the obvious place and still can’t find it. I just spent a couple of weeks looking everywhere for a set of metal numbers I’d ordered. I decided to clear my gardening shelves in the garages, and there they were in their little envelope. They were intended for an outdoor sign so I guess I put them with my outdoor gardening stuff, but if I hadn’t cleaned the shelf off, I’d have never found them.
I already left a reply in another dimension…if you look hard you may find it.
You got me again. I was so sure they were going to be in your back pocket.
oh..look…there it is!
This is great. I, too, have been known to leave things in the refrigerator. My friend at work says the sage wisdom of his father is that things are usually where they are supposed to be. That does not hold true in my house, nor in yours, it seems. And how did I get so far behind in your posts????
I have started a campaign of storing odd things in the refrigerator. I do it to annoy my wife and provide cover for the time I inadvertently leave something there.
Don’t worry about getting behind in reading, I’ve gotten behind in writing – but it is easy to do because there is so much good writing on WordPress.
Even your comments make me laugh. I’m going to have to take a personal day to catch up with everyone’s blog.
A very familiar every- day occurrence in our home. Reading it made me snicker throughout.
Glad to hear that I made you snicker. It is why I do what I do. 🙂
Boy, does this sound familiar! At least your wife knows where to tell you to look. Sadly, my husband is as clueless as I am when it comes to locating all the things I have “misplaced.” I really think that I could accomplish great things with my life if only I could get back all time I have spent looking for things…
Ah, but then there is the longing for all the time lost to staying organized.
I worked with a guy (Al) who was obsessively organized. He couldn’t stand anything out of place. It was so extreme that it invited torment. Another guy I worked with would sneak into Al’s office and leave a chad (remember those? the chip of paper punched out of an IBM card) somewhere on his carpet. It drove Al nuts. He knew that whenever he left his office, inevitably a chad would appear and he couldn’t work until he found it.
Poor Al…I guess misplacing some things isn’t as bad as I thought!
In my defense, the “place it belongs” changes quite a bit. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
It’s like each object gets to determine for itself where it belongs.
Well, should they not have a say?
In my house, I’m always the one doing the asking. My husband thinks I’m accusing him of moving whatever-it-is, but I swear I’m not. They just up and hid on their own. 😀
I have much the same problem. As I stroll about the house, the things I want and need, scurry into the nearest hiding place.
By the way, thank you so much for the reblog of Steel Venom. I have met a number of great people because of it.
You’re welcome. It’s a great post. I read it again before sharing it, and laughed all over again. 🙂
Always check the milk shelf. Hmmm. I would have never thought to look there.
Mark, it is because you are a guy. I will bet it is the first place your wife would think of.
This literally made me laugh out loud. The same scene has repeated itself in every home in the world forever.
You would think we would learn – but no. It is the story of humanity.
Ha ha. Those crazy scissors!!
I still maintain that they found their way into the refrigerator on their own.
Ha ha. I believe you!!!
Lol….that’s funny. She knows you all too well.
She does, but she also always know what is in the refrigerator.
I come from the “don’t ask” school of thought, but when forced to finally beg for help after several hours/days/weeks of fruitless searching (and depending on how pressing the need of the misplaced item), she usually locates it without hesitation…a knack she attributes to the uterus being converted to a homing device through the raising of two children.
My mother was notorious for this. She had 11 kids and honed her amazing skill by having to keep track of 3 or 4 hyper-active pre-schoolers at a time.
You’re so lucky to live with someone who knows you so well, and takes you as you are.
Viva la imperfection!
Uh Liz,……. You know there is a downside to that. Sigh, well, at least it give me something to write about.
So I’ve heard. Embrace the Muse, but carefully and with humor, eh?
Very similar scenario in our house, but with a twist. I’ve nicknamed my bride “The Queen of Stash” as she finds a place to stash EVERYTHING! I’m ok with that, especially with my pre-dementia/Alzheimer’s condition. Unfortunately, in addition to being the queen of stash my dear bride is also a “serial rearranger”. Therefore, the moment I become comfortable with knowing where everything is, she rearranges it all. Not sure if that is a compulsive behavior, or if she’s purposely making me doubt my sanity. Either way, it gets back to asking that age old question, “Honey! Where is……..?”
Oh……, I am hearing you there, Buddy. The “Honey! Where is……..?” question is really, “Where is the new place where that thing belongs?”
Exactly, and even when I’ve made that distinction clear, I still get “the look”.
My husband read something the other day about how having places where things belong makes them so much easier to keep track of. He told me all about it, as if it were a great revelation. Which just proves he never listens to me when I tell him he ought to put things where they belong.
Ahhhh, but there is a subtle difference. When he hears that “having places where things belong makes them so much easier to keep track of”, he is thinking where he wants them. When he hears you say it, he hears that things belong where you want them.
It is one of those, Men are from Mars, Women are from someplace else things.
I would rather hunt for an hour then to ask. Whenever I’m forced to ask the answer is usually, “Did you look under your elbow?” Damn, I hate when that happens.
The way I figure it, humiliation is inevitable. It is best to get it over with as soon as possible.
Excellent point. Maybe I’ll revise my technique (or non-technique as it were)
One would think it requires a special skill set to find things in my household and that I am the only one in possession of it. I’ve finally taken a stand and refuse to answer the “where is it?” question. The drawback is the naked, hungry people now walking about my house.
See… That’s what I am all about. Naked, hungry, missed appointment, lost stuff, chaos – no problem. You just have to roll with whatever happens. Some people have a problem with that…. I just don’t understand why. Just as long as there is always pizza and beer.
This scene could have played out in our house. He misplaces; I find. And then I remind, please just put whatever item back where you found it.
Here’s the worst offense: He pulled something from the depths of the chest freezer, placing bags of frozen strawberries on the basement floor in the process. But…he forgot to return the berries to the freezer. Several days later I head to the basement to do laundry and encounter a fruity aroma. I walk to the freezer and find the bags of thawed berries pooled in juice. These weren’t just any berries. They were handpicked at a local berry farm, paid for, cleaned and cut for freezing. Sigh. I was not a happy wife.
Oooops, I have done that. Not handpicked berries from a local farm, mind you, but things lovingly canned from our garden. The cats tried to tell me I had done something wrong… but they gave up and went into hiding for a week. I should have hid too.
Randy wishes he would have hidden.
Haha! The first place I thought you should look was the fridge. That happens here all the time too…but I won’t say who the offender is….
One of these days, we will have refrigerators “smart” enough to tell us, “Uhhhhh, that goes in the junk drawer.”
Just another case of Domestic Blindness!
When I read the opening lines (particularly, “it is mostly me doing the asking, and mostly my wife doing the answering”) the only question that came to mind was “Is this liturgy, or a call-and-response field holler?” I suppose either could apply, although the fact that you had to yell for assistance supports the field holler. It’s amazing, really, how much of life gets patterned. And, if we’re honest, those patterns are part of the comfort of life.
I would definitely categorize much of our relationship as comfortable patterns of call-and-response. Even our terms of endearment play out that way.
ME: You know, you are not half bad.
SHE: Can’t say the same about you but I have been told there is hope. Still waiting….
As for patterns, it is a subject dear to my heart. I have been meaning to write a post on how Stan became a machine-whisperer. It speaks to how one becomes really good at craft. Someone like Stan, a guy who is semi-literate, can achieve a profound understanding of the patterns that make up the physical world and therefore with little in the way of manuals and specification, can quickly develop a deep sense of what is working correctly and what is not. It is not just that he has a great deal of experience, it is that he learns more from the experiences that he has than others do.
haha My father once unpacked the car from a day shopping with my mom. When looking for the milk she found his shoes in the fridge and the milk in his closet. Mostly she went alone after that.
I have employed the same technique to get out of shopping. It works!
I love this! First, because it’s funny. Second, because I’ve done that. You didn’t mention going off into a side-rage over the packaging that requires industrial scissors in the first place. My first thought would have been the cats. We have one who steals tools. Give that little girl 60 seconds and you might as well start shopping for scissors.
I held off mentioning the side-rage, because…. well, they are legendary. My grand-daughter once accused me of throwing a mantrum.
Always, always, go with “the cats”.
“Mantrum” I like that. I see snarky humor runs in the family.