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Things that disappear

Iris

Iris

Justified & Ancient
Joined
May 22, 2004
Messages
2,929
Yesterday I went with the craft group to a gallery where you can paint your own plate and have it fired later.
They also have a showroom with lots of china for sale quite cheaply, so I bought some cereal bowls as ours are always getting broken and two soap pumps with china flowers which I thought would be nice for presents.
I paid and the girl wrapped them carefully in 3 paper parcels and put them in a large bag.
I took it to my friend's car for the journey back, then transferred it to my boot and drove home and brought the bag inside.
The bowls were there wrapped in 2 parcels but no sign of the pumps. I emailed my friend but it's not in her car nor in mine which I checked first.
Was sure the girl put everything in the bag but they seem to have disappeared into the ether.
 
Iris said:
Yesterday I went with the craft group to a gallery where you can paint your own plate and have it fired later.
They also have a showroom with lots of china for sale quite cheaply, so I bought some cereal bowls as ours are always getting broken and two soap pumps with china flowers which I thought would be nice for presents.
I paid and the girl wrapped them carefully in 3 paper parcels and put them in a large bag.
I took it to my friend's car for the journey back, then transferred it to my boot and drove home and brought the bag inside.
The bowls were there wrapped in 2 parcels but no sign of the pumps. I emailed my friend but it's not in her car nor in mine which I checked first.
Was sure the girl put everything in the bag but they seem to have disappeared into the ether.
Click to expand...

Your craft group sounds interesting, I`ll have to look into such things myself, now the summer weather is her.

I hope your missing items turn up soon Iris. If your in anyway like me, the missing items will turn up later in a place you could have swore you had checked earlier.
 
Things do have a way of disappearing, I lost my house keys a while back. I had been out doing the weekly shop, on arriving home with a boot full of frozen food I found I couldn't get in the house. I knew that I had them with me a short time before because I have a habit of repeatedly checking my pockets, I emptied every shopping bag at least twice, went through the car bit by bit. checked the boot, pulled out all the mats and slid the seats back to look underneath, nothing even looked in the glove box. I finally got in several hours later having collecting my spare keys from a relative, and feeling extremely p*****off. the next morning I opened the car door, and there right in the center of the mat that I had pulled out thrown aside then put back were my keys, i'm still baffled.
 
Silentman said:
Things do have a way of disappearing, I lost my house keys a while back. ... I finally got in several hours later having collecting my spare keys from a relative, and feeling extremely p*****off. the next morning I opened the car door, and there right in the center of the mat that I had pulled out thrown aside then put back were my keys, i'm still baffled.
Click to expand...

The last time this sort of thing happened to me, I finally figured out something had distracted me in the course of unloading the car (e.g., a shopping bag fell over or broke), I'd set my keys down in an odd but convenient place (probably atop the steering column or dash) to deal with the distraction, and I'd forgotten to pick up the keys again. In my case, it was slamming one of the doors during my panicked search that caused the keys to fall to the floorboard. It wasn't until I heard the keys fall and saw their location that I recalled that I'd set them aside.

In my experience such apparent disappearances in the course of routine activities often trace back to this sort of one-off distraction. For example, having the phone ring while leaving / entering one's residence carries a high risk of immediately-forgotten little actions such as my setting the keys aside in the incident mentioned above.
 
It does seem the likely explanation, although I did check everywhere including the dash, door pockets etc. and the keys were in the passenger footwell, I just couldn't figure out where they could have fallen from.
 
I am a very forgetful person, and I forget things a minute after I've thought of them.
However, I haven't yet lost my keys because I always keep them with me in my left breast pocket. I've got into the habit of doing that.
Another thing I could suggest is to copy Joan Armatrading - hang the door key around your neck on a chain.
 
Mythopoeika said:
I am a very forgetful person, and I forget things a minute after I've thought of them.
However, I haven't yet lost my keys because I always keep them with me in my left breast pocket. I've got into the habit of doing that.
Another thing I could suggest is to copy Joan Armatrading - hang the door key around your neck on a chain.
Click to expand...
Thanks but I have never lost my keys before or since.
 
What's the deal with
Socks?
Disposable Cig Lighters?
Guitar Picks?
 
Mythopoeika said:
I am a very forgetful person, and I forget things a minute after I've thought of them.
However, I haven't yet lost my keys because I always keep them with me in my left breast pocket. I've got into the habit of doing that.
Another thing I could suggest is to copy Joan Armatrading - hang the door key around your neck on a chain.
Click to expand...

If you need a fail-safe key carrying / storage system, two words for you; "nipple piercing"!
 
Patrick30 said:
What's the deal with
Socks?
Disposable Cig Lighters?
Guitar Picks?
Click to expand...
They are all too inherently plural to not lose.

Bic lighters/pens are slippy shiny items that are attracted to the one-way cavernous maw that lurks at the backs of sofas. They also gravitate towards that automative fourth dimension, the dashboard niche-hole, thence to rattle constantly-yet-unlocatably, then suddenly one day they are gone, like migratory birds with the first winter winds.

Zippos are chunky unloseable things in contrast, by virtue both of weight and cost. You don't need the nose of a bloodhound to track 'em down, vapour trails help stop them escaping off into plastrickery.

Guitar picks are almost designed to be lost. One of life's few musical consumables, alongside guitar strings, drum skins and grand pianos, they float on sycamore wings of imminent loss. Nobody ever truly owns a pick: they are borrowed from the fabric of the cosmos, just for the duration of the song.
 
" Nobody ever truly owns a pick: they are borrowed from the fabric of the cosmos, just for the duration of the song."

Beautiful !
 
Thought of this thread this morning. About 18 months ago I couldn't find my little green watering can anywhere so had to buy another one.
This morning I was moving things from the dining room table so that I have space to put spices from around where the men will put the new oven and top tomorrow. Now I have moved things many times since I lost that can but guess what? There it was sitting there, so now I have 2.
 
MrsCarlos lost a ring on a day-long beer festival trip a few weeks back.

I bought us matching rings for Valentine's day this year...

RRM_1024x1024.jpg


...and the wife's disappeared.


We searched everywhere, back to the festival venue, the curry house we went to afterwards, all the gang checked their clothes, bags etc, nothing.

We were both pretty gutted, not massively expensive to replace but still upsetting.

Anyway, three weeks later, MrsCarlos shouted 'ow!' as she trod on the missing ring - smack in the middle of the bedroom carpet. A bit of carpet we both walk over a good few times every day.

No clue.
 
I once entertained the fancy that such things might be the other half of another phenomenon where people claim to stumble on just the thing or book they needed in the street or on a park bench or whatever. What if the things that disappear here are the things that appear, as needed, there?

But then the sequnece of events described in the thread "The Sign Of The Cross" put an end to that idea. Though it hasn't really created a new theory that survives very long. It seems a mystery without a solution.
 
When I was at school in my early teens, I traded something for a metal throwing star (The type ninjas throw in films).
When I got home I took one of my dads metal files and sharpened all the points so that it would become embedded in whatever I threw it at.
With all the points primed I went into the garden and stood about three foot from the base of a large Sycamore tree that was the intended target for my stars first test.

I threw the star at the tree, I saw and heard it hit - and it disappeared.

I obsessively searched every possible nook and cranny in the whole area in absolute disbelief ( and annoyance) but it was gone. And in the years afterwards it never turned up.

As the youth of today say, WTF ?!
 
Embedded deep inside the tree?
 
I can only think that the tree had some fine split in the bark. Sycamore is a very hard wood, to bury such a star in the tree without some kind of existing fissures, suggests a supernaturally 'strong arm'.

While a callow y. I was something of an amateur bow-maker and I lost a lot of arrows that were shot over grass, the arrow would enter the grass almost flat and completely bury itself in the roots, parallel to the ground. Unless one spotted the flights, the only way you'd ever find it was tread on it.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Embedded deep inside the tree?
Click to expand...
Maybe it's just under the bark:

Bark Characteristics

Sycamore trees begin as pale, smooth-barked saplings. As the tree grows, the thickening bark flakes off in small- to palm-sized patches, revealing light-green bark that fades to a creamy, off-white. Mature trees have rough, deep gray-brown bark on their trunks, while the thinner upper limbs keep their flaking bark. This growth habit creates a mottled pattern that gives the tree character even in midwinter

http://www.ehow.com/info_8685186_sycamore-trees-bark-falling-off.html

So perhaps the star got lodged behind a piece of bark that's about to fall off. When the bark falls, the star might reappear!
 
Great lateral thinking rynner2, and thanks coal, but the description of flaking bark doesn't match my memory of the tree. I covered every inch of that tree at the area I saw the star hit, looking for hidden pockets, fissures, faults, bug/bird holes etc, but there was nothing!
It was solid. And bear in mind this star wasn't small, it was the size of a drinks coaster and half inch thick.
 
"Only the lost is eternally owned"
Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian national poet.
 
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