Missing, Without a Trace

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. 

Losing It

I’m losing stuff around the house, and I’m not talking about the normal things one can’t find, such as a single sock in the laundry. I actually solved that problem several years ago by safety pinning pairs of socks together. My current laundry loss is one of those plastic dryer balls that replace the chemical dryer sheets like Bounce we used to put in with the laundry. The spiked dryer balls tend to hide in the folds of fitted sheets, but I searched all my bed linens to no avail. Weird.

Also strange are the nearly empty water jugs I kept in the basement following last year’s storms that cut power in many areas. Survival experts suggested you keep several gallons of water on hand, so I dutifully bought a couple of two-gallon plastic containers of water to store in the basement. Last week I noticed they were almost empty. No telltale puddles or water marks around them. So much for disaster preparedness. 

If Mitt Romney wins the election he’s expressed a commitment to eliminate funding for Public Broadcasting Service, including Sesame Street and its signature character, Big Bird. Putting aside the left-wing mind-control argument Republicans have postulated about Sesame Street, the now 43-year-old children’s educational program has been a fount of early learning.

When one of our nephews was a toddler, his mother sat him in front of the television to watch the then new show. Some months later, he stunned her by reading the label of a cereal box. As she and her husband had not practiced reading with him, the only explanation was Sesame Street. 

Gilda and I employed Sesame Street when our kids were young. Saturday mornings we’d let Dan and Ellie watch Sesame Street and Electric Company as we lounged in bed. We, along with tens of thousands of other parents, protested when PBS changed its Saturday morning programming from kid-friendly to politics and business shows. I think we might have stopped sending money to PBS for a while.

Over the Columbus Day weekend Gilda and I visited Dan, Allison, Finley and Dagny in their new home in Acton, Mass. They live in the Fifth Congressional District represented by Niki Tsongas, widow of Paul Tsongas, the former U.S. Senator and one-time Democratic presidential hopeful. I met both of them during a business trip to New Hampshire in early 1992.

Before boarding the shuttle flight to Boston from LaGuardia, I recognized Tsongas. As luck would have it, I sat across the aisle from him. But he never looked my way during our time waiting for takeoff. His body was shifted toward his wife’s window seat. I’m notorious for falling asleep on airplanes even before getting airborne, so I fretted about missing an opportunity to talk with him.

I tried to stay awake by reading The NY Times. I was midway through the first section of the paper when I saw my opportunity. After finishing an article on Tsongas’ chances in the upcoming New Hampshire primary, I tapped him on the shoulder and said I couldn’t resist talking to the man profiled in the article I had just read. He was most gracious. We chatted for several minutes. When I told him I was headed to New Hampshire, he joked he had spent some time there himself. 

Last night while watching the Yankees-Orioles playoff baseball game, I believe I heard John Smoltz, one of the announcers, say he wanted to get a ride on one of the blimps providing overhead shots of the game and surroundings. I can empathize with him.

Back in 1972, as part of a graduate journalism program at the Newhouse School of Public Communications of Syracuse University, my class covered the Florida presidential primary. We were stationed in Miami. I was assigned to follow the campaign of John Ashbrook, a conservative Republican congressman from Ohio. He had little chance of winning, especially in the Miami area, so I had lots of free time. Two of my classmates and I came upon the Goodyear blimp moored at a field. The blimp was there for coverage of a sporting event some days later. We talked up the crew who promised us a free ride the next day. When we arrived Tuesday morning at the mooring site, the blimp was not there. Seems Walter Cronkite’s crew had been ordered to film Miami vistas for that evening’s election coverage. I never forgave Cronkite for pre-empting my chance to float in air.

There’s a truism in sports—never let a weaker opponent stick around. Score points early and often, so they’ll be discouraged and give up. If you let them hang around, they could surprise you and win. What’s true of sports is also true of politics. Barack Obama, an avid sports fan, has just learned the truth of that aphorism with his lackadaisical performance during last week’s debate with Romney. 

What possessed him to breathe new life into his opponent’s chances is beyond anyone’s analytic powers. Perhaps he himself can’t explain why he played the debate the way he did. I can’t explain it any more than I can explain where my dryer ball disappeared to or why there was no telltale sign of my stored water. I can replace the dryer ball and the water. The question is, can Obama replace the lost affection and momentum among his supporters and undecided voters?