Losing

I am told this helps, but I think for all purposes specific to this situation, it makes me feel worse. More than anything I hate two closely related things; losing things and losing at important stuff. The latter is not really important. The first however, is the reason I have chosen to write. I write to you all a man bent over in defeat. I hate losing things. It makes me feel seven years old in a far away boarding school again. Boy, did I lose lots of things back then.

Of all the things I did to get used to life living away from home, it took me such a long time before I could go to school and come back with all my stuff accounted for. My parents used to compile lists for my brother and I of all of our uniform and civvies clothes and I always lost a lot. James, of course, was perfect. It was so bad. The lists would be taped to the top of my trunk and before I got picked up for the holidays, my mother would have me take everything out of my trunk assure me that this would be no different from all the other last school days and that I shouldn't have bothered packing anyway. She would take a pen (usually red) and start down the list. I am not even going to discuss what happened if on one of those most auspicious days, the list was mysteriously missing from my trunk. Anyway, moving along, instead of 4 khaki shirts I would have 2, instead of six pairs of school socks I would have five socks period, instead of one Washington Redskin's sweater I would have none. After an hour or so of the embarrassing ritual, being forced to look longingly at the rest of my friends who would hug their parents at their arrival, wave nonchalant goodbyes to me and mine and disappear for the rest of that school year, my mother - being thoroughly disappointed with me - would then move on to inspect me. She's a nice woman but by then I had tried the last of her patience. I would average about twenty or so items unaccounted for before she turned to give me the inspection. According to her at these times, I was always dirty, had worn the wrong and torn shirt, had annoyingly managed to lose the garters to my socks (even though most of the time they were nothing more than mere elastic bands - you try keeping those from snapping daily for the next three months) or according to my father, I was just not looking "jacked up" enough. It was then she would notice that either the watch she had bought me at the beginning of term was missing or, depending on how foolishly I was trying to avoid an incident, it would be on my wrist but blank (damn "totally awesome" digital watches). My mom would just look, shake her head, consider asking me what happened, take it back because she sensed the tale would somehow involve water and a friend's name she hadn't heard of until then, promise to never buy me another watch, and say we should just get going. Shortly after all of this I got to go home every year.

I am not sure when I started coming back home with everything I left with. I am not even sure if this was long enough ago that my mother was still checking for the list at the beginning and end of each school term. Anyway, I hope all of this could start to explain why I feel dumb, not "jacked up" and certainly no older than seven years old when I lose something. Oh, and incidentally, I can't find my IPod as well as my phone.