I don’t know about you, but I spend half my waking hours looking for… things.
If it isn’t my TV remote, it’s my red iPod, my car keys or that grocery list I made out so carefully. It used to be my glasses until I got bifocals. Walter Griffin got them first, so it was all right. I can never find a pen even though I buy G2 Bold pens at Staples at least once per month.
This week it was the debit card and the invaluable phone charger. I found them both after numerous man-hours lost. The charger was actually plugged into a kitchen outlet, but in a different outlet. The debit card? Well, that was sitting on the bed table, but it was upside down on the white side, on top of white papers. I found it just as I was about to search the garbage for the missing, vital piece of plastic.
I have two theories. There are ghosts and goblins afoot in Cobb Manor.
Or, I am a moron.
The worst instance was on my now legendary Florida trip. I got malaria on Jekyll Island but was summarily dismissed from the Villas by the Sea, forced to drive to the Florida border for an appropriate place to die. I staggered into a $90 hotel room to sweat and vomit for a few days. When I returned to the human race, I opened the car door to find my vital documents strewn across the floor of my trusty Honda. There were my favorite picture with Blue Eyes, my White House identification from that Al Gore campaign and that St. Jude card. (Blue Eyes insisted.) I kept my driver’s license in my wallet for motel identification, so that was safe.
But the Maine registration could not be found, despite a dreary, sickly search. I assumed I had kicked it out the door on some feverish exit and was terrified that some southern gendarme would now stop me, find me without registration, confiscate the mighty Honda and put my Yankee behind in some sleazy Florida jail. I drove at the speed limit for the rest of the trip, no fun at all.
When I arrived safely at the Preston home where Jane and Mark have decided to adopt me (Thank God) I took everything out of that damned car looking for that little yellow slip so I could speed again and avoid that jail cell. No luck.
Driving home with one eye in the rearview mirror, I looked in the obvious places. Nothing. Arriving home at Cobb Manor I called the insurance company for the registration form. They emailed it, and I went immediately to the Camden Town Office. I was still looking for Florida state troopers in the rearview mirror. After obtaining the vital document, I went immediately to Fowlie’s Overpriced Emporium, maybe 600 yards and three minutes away. I bought Maine lottery tickets, as is my wont and returned to the Honda.
Can you guess?
The damned missing registration was sitting in the door compartment, as yellow as can be. My first reaction was looking around the parking lot to see which demented friend had pulled this ruse.
There were numerous suspects. Chief Al was the lead suspect, but he was in Maine when I lost the registration. Paul Harrigan would have been No. 1, but he died years ago. John Purcell was a highly likely culprit, but he was in Charleston, and I lost the damn thing before I got there. Marky Mark would have done it in a second, but he was way down in Weeki Wachee when the document disappeared. David Grima was too lazy.
There was no one in the parking lot but me.
All right, I am a little daffy, maybe more. I did once “lose” another Honda in Daytona Beach and (possibly) walked by it at least 20 times. I tried to rent a jail cell when I reported my car “stolen,” but the police declined. Instead I spent the night in an $8 youth hostel, sleeping on a box spring surrounded by the Manson Gang while Harleys roared by all night long. It was Bike Week. I found it the next morning, right where I left it. (Blush.)
But I think even I would have noticed a canary yellow registration form three inches away from my alabaster columns. I emptied that door compartment at least five times.
There are two theories. The Cobb Manor ghosts and goblins wanted to get away from the snow, so they came along.
Or, I am a moron.
Where is that damn red iPod?
Emmet Meara lives in Camden in blissful retirement after working as a reporter for the BDN in Rockland for 30 years.