File this entry under weird things happen to Murray. I've previously chronicled my belief that inanimate objects send me not so subtle messages, as when my car died the day I was to give it to my brother-in-law. Or when my company umbrella broke in my hand during a rainstorm as I walked up Park Avenue to the office on my last day of work.
Today's strange happenings report involves disappearing objects. I'm not talking about stuff I can't find because of a senior moment. I'm talking about stuff that literally disappears. Without a trace.
First, some background. I do most of our laundry, including the sheets and towels. A little more than a year ago we stopped using Bounce fabric softener sheets in the dryer. Instead, upon the advice of our nephew Eric, we started adding two reusable dryer balls with each load. They’re plastic, about the size of a tennis ball with short spikes all the way around. It’s like tossing two rolled up hedgehogs into your dryer.
Anyway, about a year ago when drying some bed linens, only one ball emerged from the dryer. That usually means a ball got tucked into a sheet or pillow case and all I needed to do was feel through the laundry basket for the ball. But none revealed itself. Hmmm. The mystery has yet to be solved. I bought replacement dryer balls.
Mystery Number Two: Two weeks ago I washed our white sheet set along with my dirty clothes. I folded the laundry after it was dry, carried it upstairs and put everything away. Linens go in a chest in our bedroom. Inside it went the fitted bed sheet. At least that's what I believe happened, for the bed sheet is nowhere to be found, not inside the chest, not on any other bed, not in any other piece of storage furniture or closet. Nowhere. Poof. Gone. I’ve searched high and low. I even asked our housekeeper today if she saw the sheet. No luck. Another object lost without a trace.
Perhaps I’m living through a real-life reverse version of Gaslight, the Ingrid Bergman-Charles Boyer film noir in which a husband tries to drive his wife insane by making objects mysteriously disappear. But that would mean Gilda is masterminding these incidents and she wasn’t home when the dryer ball disappeared and she claims she never knew where I stored our sheets.
Uh-oh: I couldn’t find my second set of car keys today. As part of my obsessive-compulsive personality, I believe in contingencies and redundancies. That means carrying a second set of car keys just in case I lock my primary keys in the car (as I did last winter, only to discover I had failed to take my second set with me that day. Loyal readers will remember I had to wait an hour for AAA to arrive and jimmy the door open).
I searched all the usual suspect places—pants pockets, jackets pockets, the floor beneath my night table. Nothing. Unlike the dryer ball or the bed sheet, this definitely was a case of senioritis. I racked my brain trying to think where I might have left them. And then it hit me. I had placed the keys in my softball gear bag which I had just relegated to the basement at the end of our season Sunday. I triumphantly retrieved them.
In baseball, batting one for three is considered a success. I don’t think it works that way with lost objects.
