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May 23, 2006
Meditating on a Lost Wallet
As you may recall, I've recently misplaced my keys.
About 18 years ago I misplaced my wallet. It was one of those situations in which I walked into my apartment and within ten minutes realized it was gone. At the time, I gave the living room a quick look and, when I didn't find it, decided it must be in the car. I wasn't real worried; I'd be in the car again soon enough.
To sort of speed things up, it wasn't in the car and it didn't appear to be in the apartment.
I told a coworker about it and she said she'd meditate on it to help me try to find it. This woman had never been to my home and I'm not sure she had a clear idea of where I lived past north of campus.
The next day she came into work and said she'd done the meditating. I asked if anything had presented itself to her and she said:
"At first I had the feeling that it was near a blue couch with birds on it. And then I got the feeling it was near a brown couch with dark brown squares on it. Do you have a brown couch with darker brown squares on it?"
As it happens, we did have a brown couch with darker brown squares on it. It sat right next to our blue couch that had birds on it.
I know what you're thinking: You boys really needed an interior decorator. What can I say -- we tried to pick furnishing that didn't clash with the weights and bench we had in the dining room. And free was important; both of the couches had been given to us.
But really -- the whole thing was pretty amazing. If someone asked you to describe 25 different couches you would never come up with a blue one with birds on it -- this couch had not been bought this way, it had been reupholstered with this fabric. And the brown one with brown squares was so late 60's. And to have them in the same room, next to each other. This certainly had a mystic feel to it.
The wallet -- well, it wasn't in either couch. I imagine I dropped it on the way into the apartment and a street thug picked it up.
I did learn a lesson from this experience: If you had something important ten minutes ago and you can't find it now, get off your ass and start looking for it. The more time that passes the more likely you're not to not find it.
Which brings us to my keys.
They came up missing last Wednesday night. I had them, I unlocked the front door with them, I made two trips to the van after that that may or may not have required keys. They came up missing Thursday morning. I was pretty sure they turn up over the weekend as I cleaned and bounced around the house.
They didn't.
Finally, yesterday I had to do some serious looking. I'm expecting an important piece of mail and, for whatever reason, the sender (a government body ... The Man to you hippie-types) has trouble sending mail to my house and keeps sending stuff to my PO Box. I needed the PO Box key; the Post Office (another government body) will not open your box for you simply because you've left your key at home (I don't blame them -- I don't think this is part of a larger conspiracy.)
I pulled the cushions off the couch (one with a southwestern thing going for it ... no birds), looked in cabinets, pulled open drawers, checked things I'd recently worn, moved chairs, etc.
I didn't check the kitchen table because I'd already checked it several times. I'd checked it so many times -- when there was so very little on it (an empty bowl and a bag of apples) that I'd since used it as a staging area for things that needed a home: my GPS, my MP3 Player, dress shoes, several books, kitchen utensils I can never identify -- things like that.
About 7 p.m. I decided I'd go for a bike ride. My sunglasses were on the table and as I reached for them I noticed dad's keys peeking out from beneath the bag of apples. I didn't want them to get 'lost' and picked them up. Naturally, they were my keys.
They'd been on the table the whole time -- during a time when the table had on it only an empty bowl and the bag of apples. Well, and my keys. I had scootched the bag of apples around when I was looking for the keys. I had eaten at least three apples out of this bag since the Thursday the keys came up missing. I had never noticed the keys.
The apples are supposed to be in the bowl.
There's a lesson here, somewhere.
Posted by delmer at May 23, 2006 8:21 AM