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June 22, 2006
Lost and Found
I lose my gym membership card about once a year. It's nothing I plan -- I've checked my calendar and I've never penciled it in (or, in my case, put it in my Palm T/X, synced it to my computer and then zapped it into my watch by aiming the watch at my computer monitor while it flashes white bars) -- it's nothing I understand.
I keep the card in a storage bin at the bottom center of my sweet ride's dash assembly. It is always to the far left and is wedged there among tapes the boys and I never listen to but that I don't bother to toss (anybody here familiar with Dinosaur Cafe? Maybe the Sesame Street tapes ... C is for cookie, that's good enough for me ...).
It was about 28 months ago that I went to grab the gym card to discover it was not where it should have been.
The folks at the gym were OK with the missing card and I explained that I'd spend some time looking for it after work. I tore the van apart. I checked the house even though I'm sure the card has never crossed the threshold. I couldn't find it.
Replacement cards are $10.00. I bought one.
Roughly 12 months would pass. I repeated the above and eventually dropped another $10.00.
Roughly 12 months would pass again -- bringing us to about 6 months ago. I was at the do-it-yourself carwash and had most of the van doors open as I vacuumed the beast. As I walked around the van, my gym card was laying on the pavement. The wind whipping through the van had snatched it from it's safe, next-to-Dinosaur-Cafe location, and whisked it outside.
Is this how I'd lost all the cards? I could see how it might be. I clean the van often enough that the vacuuming scenario would make some sense. I've been with the boys several times when we've had the doors open and tornado-force winds have whipped through the van.
Finally the puzzle was solved and I had broken the cycle.
About a week ago I was in the van alone and looked down between the seats. My gym membership card was laying on the floor. Ah ... this is how they get lost, I thought as I picked it up to return it to the storage area.
Beneath the card was ... my gym membership card. And beneath that, Jack's library card.
This was a puzzler. I had two gym cards in my hand as I checked the storage area. It, naturally, had in it my gym membership card.
WTF.
The cards had been missing for more than one and two years. I didn't remember Jack having a library card at all. And now they appear in a stack on the floor between the seats. I was very close to contacting The Phoenix thinking that maybe he'd have some insight. Maybe I had a trans-dimensional thing going on in the mini van (which would make it even sweeter).
I had cleaned and vacuumed the minivan numerous times -- I'd had the glove box emptied -- I'd had that locked thing underneath the passenger seat emptied -- I'd never seen the cards. And here they were!
Unlike television, the explanation that makes the most sense is often the simplest. At my house the simplest explanation often involves one of three children.
At dinner that night I asked, "Does anybody here know what my gym card looks like."
"Yes," Haydn offered, "I found two of them."
"Where?"
"When I was looking for that battery," the one I remembered him dropping in the van near the storage thing, "I found a secret pocket under the cassette tapes. The cards were in there."
The secret pocket is the heater vent that blows air across the floor of the van. I'm guessing I'd had the cards -- months apart from each other, mind you -- sitting on the carpet when I applied the brakes and that they'd slid forward into the heater vent.
So. If you've lost anything in a minivan, take a look in the heater vent beneath the dash between the seats. It may be there.
(Women ... this does not apply to your innocence.)
Posted by delmer at June 22, 2006 7:01 AM
Comments
I think the interdimensional theory only applies to keys and half of a pair of socks. Those are the instances where you see your keys on a table, and suddenly they are gone...only to show up at the bottom of your cupboard. That is a true mystery.
As for cards, I too have had issues with them. It simply a matter of physics. You have a paper thin, and plyable object inside a vehicle with all kinds of nooks and crannies. You add the fact that the doors open constantly, to allow miniature tornadoes into the cab, and then the constant motion of vehicular movements (including sharp turns and sudden braking), you've got a yourself an environment very condusive to losing your cards.
My suggestion: punch a hole in your card and attach it to a keychain. Or maybe to one of those coil keychains that I see gamblers using to swipe their cards at the casinos.
Posted by: The Phoenix at June 22, 2006 9:22 AM