![]() ![]() This line of reasoning was appealing because it laid the blame firmly elsewhere than my own calcified brain. Because here was the thing: the longer I searched for my pants, the question of where they were hiding became less interesting to me than whatever unseen force made them disappear in the first place. I loved lingering on these extramundane possibilities. If we don’t have a concept for something - say aliens, for example - then can we even see them if they’re sitting among us right now, perhaps wearing my pants? And the possible agency of inanimate objects - “I won’t rule it out,” said Gillian. We considered ghosts, which neither of us was opposed to. A pack rat will abscond with an object, sometimes returning it to the exact same place, but they’d likely prefer Gillian’s shiny earrings to my blue pants. The conversation with Gillian began with pack rats. Taking off my pants seemed like the right way to start a conversation about lost pants and also: Could this be how I lost my pants, removing them while visiting? I kept a close eye as they dried by the fire. “Be prepared for tears!!” she texted back immediately.Īs I walked to her house a few blocks away, a sudden winter rainstorm drenched me so thoroughly that Gillian offered me a pair of dry pants when I arrived. I texted my friend Gillian, whose experience losing things is cosmic. I decided to abandon the exhausting certitude of the internet and contact an actual expert. This meant I could also thankfully ignore the Harvard Health study that advised retracing your steps while walking backward to boost your memory. I’d have retraced my steps, in case my mother did know best, but if I could remember my steps I’d remember where I put my pants, Mom. I imagined I was my pants, lounging rakishly in a dark corner sipping an Old Fashioned.Ī University of Aberdeen study decoded “optimal foraging” based on rapid eye movements, which meant searching cluttered places instead of the neater areas humans prefer to look, but my house was uniformly tidy so I crossed that off the list. I did this while practising the Three C’s, as the internet, where I turned first for help, told me to do: Stay C-onfident, C-alm and shut up shut up! I imagined a quivering silver string from my chest to my pants. That I was part of an Earth-wide catastrophe of carelessness toward the things we own did not bring me any closer to finding my excellent blue pants, however. ( Ca-ching goes the phone replacement business.) My A-plus talent for losing cellphones lined up statistically, too: we lose our phones on average once every three years, reported .uk in 2020, which in Britain adds up to 98 million lost phones since 2007 and in the U.S. ![]() If you’re a loser like me, you misplace nine such items a day, which means by age 60 you’ll have lost 200,000 things and spent 153 days of your life looking for them, according to an often-quoted 2012 study by a British insurance company. Losing things is not unusual for me, but the objects are transitional by nature: moving here to there is when keys, glasses, gloves, umbrellas and passports are most likely to be lost, say the statisticians. Which made losing my mind seem like the more pressing problem. ![]() ![]() I wore them for three days straight and developed an intense fondness for them, so losing them was upsetting enough. They were excellent pants: French navy, with the hard-to-find fitted calf and an unexpected cuff. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |