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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, February 28, 2000
There's hope for the losers of the world
In the moments I have to spare for such things, I like to think I'm a seeker after Truth. In a small way of business, to be sure.
My experience is that, however sincerely you pursue Truth, more often than not it takes its own sweet time - and it arrives unannounced.
That's how it was this week when I learned a soul-stirring lesson about Losing.
Not about losing football games or basketball games or poker games or, more cosmic still, the Game of Life. No. Losing stuff, don't you see? You know: Car keys. House keys. Manuals for programming VCRs. That sort of thing.
In all humility I can say I have massive expertise in this area. In my time, I have lost all manner of stuff - including, one memorable year, the entire draft script for the Press Club Gridiron Show. That one was a real corker, prompting requests for intervention from St. Anthony, who among other responsibilities is charged with helping us mortals track down stuff we've misplaced.
Of course, the thing turned up in the logical place: Out in the garage on top of the water heater.
In all these decades of misplacing stuff, however, I've never really gotten to the heart of the matter - never come up with a universal formula to apply to the locating and securing of lost stuff.
Until today.
For the past week, I've been engaged in a sporadic search-and-secure mission, trying to track down the remote garage door openers for our fleet of cars. All told, we have four of these devices - yet, as of as of the end of last week, we were down to one. One! Where could the dang things have gotten to? Had they, in some incongruous fashion, fallen victim to the Sock Monster? (You know the Sock Monster: He's the creature who stealthily infiltrates your washer and drier and abducts lone socks - one for every three or four pair you own. Then he transports them to a parallel dimension. But that's another column.)
I ransacked the trunk of our ancient Bavarian road rocket. I wandered disconsolately through the house, peering under magazines and newspapers and catalogues. I emptied paper bags full of stuff that for some reason I had considered worth saving.
Nothing.
Ah, but tonight, having put the matter completely out of my mind, I'm cleaning out the back seat of the Bimmer to free up enough space to tote four young adults to the Kenny Chesney concert. Finally, I succeed in extracting all the debris, and what do you suppose is gazing blankly back at me?
A garage door opener, you say.
Ha, I say: Shows how much you know. Two garage door openers sit there, all smug and silent - and I know. They're laughing at me.
No matter. Enduring derision from inanimate objects (Mason jar lids, British automotive electricals and the like) has been a central part of my life experience.
In any case, I have the last laugh. Why? Because now I know. I know how to find stuff: Don't look for it. Only when your stuff knows you're not looking for it does it sullenly decide to show itself.
I can't count the number of times this has happened. I'm looking for, oh, say, tax documents, and what do I find? My master's thesis from 1982 on left-wing British intellectuals in the 1930s. (And a dandy piece of work it is, too. I'm thinking film rights.)
I search for car keys . . . and I find a long-lost address book.
I paw through my personal debris in search of a credit-card bill . . . and I find a movie that's overdue at the video store.
I don't pretend to understand it, but I really believe I'm onto something here. Look: You can generate all the systematic search strategies your mind can cook up - but your lost items will pick up the vibrations . . . and they'll stay lost.
Put them out of your mind. Serendipity through obliviousness, I call it. And it works.
Snicker if you will - but if you've been searching for that safe deposit box key for the last six weeks, give my approach a chance.
Yo: What have you got to lose?
So to speak.
Brooks Peterson
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