I’ve written about socks before, in one of my favorite entries ever, “Good, Cheap Socks” (see August), but what I want to discuss today, for whatever reason, is the fact that I have a super power: losing things. This includes losing socks. I know I am not the only person who has this super power, but I am, quite possibly, the person with the best of it.
Jack and I discuss, how can we turn this superpower into a money maker? If we could figure it out, we would be rich, indeed. I lose socks like nobody’s business, but I recognize there is nothing unique about that. Everyone knows that dryers eat socks.
However, I can—and do—lose anything else, everything else, and in short time. A pair of glasses: gone. Even in the same room, and even if I have never left the room, I can lose my glasses, I kid you not. I can lose a scarf between the time I leave the house and get to the car. I can lose stuff while I am sitting in the car. I lose stuff all the time, but the worst of it is losing, not my socks, but my gloves, which, like losing my glasses, is a daily occurrence. Multiple times.
I have Reynaud’s, which is a weird condition that I call “Cold Hand Disease.” Reynaud’s is a circulatory thing whereby my hands get cold and turn pink, then purple, then white. My siblings call it “spirit fingers” because purple and white were our high school colors. (Go, Tigers!) Fingers turning white is the worst phase, because it means the circulation is really messed up. This happens quite frequently, and it’s one of the reasons I have to wear gloves all the time. Even in the summer, I have to wear gloves. You can imagine how odd I seem, and the looks that people give me as I walk around town, wearing gloves in 90-degree weather. I know it’s weird, but believe me, it probably looks better than it would if I walked around with white fingers. Or frostbite. Frostbite is, obviously, not a condition that people want to have, ever, but especially in 90-degree weather. Even though it’s entirely unlikely that I would get frostbite in summer, I can’t ever move to Minnesota, because I would definitely get it if I lived there. Brrr.
I know that wearing gloves more often correlates strongly with losing them more often, too. That’s obvious. However, like my glasses, my pen, my phone, my keys, I am pretty sure that I can lose things more often, more frequently, and better than any other person can lose things. People with dementia don’t lose things as much—or as well—as I do. I once managed to lose the coffee scoop, which makes no sense at all. How does that even happen? The coffee scoop disappeared months ago, and it has never been seen since.
Ah, but gloves are special. I have an affinity for losing gloves. I even lost my parents’ gloves once! They had just bought some medical gloves, which they need for their own medical stuff, and I helped them put away groceries, which included the gloves. Their gloves disappeared, too. Perhaps they are on holiday with my other gloves, the vanished-in-the-dryer socks, and the coffee scoop.
My superpower is remarkable, and I really have never met anyone who can lose like I can. Jack says that being an Easter Egg hider would be the only thing that I could possibly do to take advantage of this dubious “skill,” and for obvious reasons. If you are missing socks and gloves, and you’ve ruled out the likelihood that the dryer ate them, you might want to question if I have house-sat for you recently. If I did, I could have lost them for you. Ah, but if you never find your missing glove, please let me know. I’m sure I have one that could match.
