Black Hole

Helping Flip find lost objects is a full-time job, and brings out certain undesirable elements of my vocabulary. He is always looking for something, and I feel pressed into service to find it for him so we can all get some peace. Since he rarely puts things back in the same place twice, it can be frustrating. It is never easy .

Just now it was the tiny black cap from a double-ended Sharpie. I spent considerable time out of my life on hands and knees, combing through rugs, before he gleefully announced that it was on his desk. Where it should be. I feel as if I witnessed a special moment in history, as it will never happen again. Luckily, I am not violent.

Earlier, I was obliged to ransack our entire apartment for a Guitar Center receipt which could not be found. I try to contain his vast collection of equipment receipts in a single large file, but sometimes, they get away from me. In this instance, I never did find it, but since they have all his purchases from the beginning of time in their computer, it requires only that we luck out and get a salesman who knows how to locate it. No small undertaking in itself. Except for the guy who looks like Keith Richard, Guitar Center employs mostly very young men who fantasize about being the next Jimi Hendrix while earning minimum wage. No one else could possibly stand the cacophony in that place all day long.

Flip is now rummaging in our largest closet, repository for five toolboxes, a dozen cartons and other items too numerous to mention (if I even remembered what was in there.) This time he was trying to find sandpaper. He knew better than to enlist my services for the third time in less than an hour. Besides, I don't know where it is, either. I have merely mastered the art of looking behind things to find other things. This is an advanced concept that I am not sure male DNA is capable of grasping. At least, not around here. He is always amazed when I move an object a tiiiiiny millimeter and what do you know? The missing item appears. Flip believes that I am magical, but really, I am just a more creative searcher. It has never occurred to him that what he seeks would be anywhere other than right in front of him. If it is not, then it must have fallen off the planet entirely. Otherwise, he understands depth perception as well as anyone.

Sometimes I work this to my advantage. I can hide a box of cookies endlessly by placing them behind another box right in the shelves designated for food storage. He will never be the wiser. Occasionally, this fails. I am always surprised when that happens. The other day, when he bought a case of beer, I bought a selection of Odwalla drinks for myself. I set them in the refrigerator door among other bottles containing maple syrup, ketchup, and walnut salad oil. Imagine my surprise when he drank them all. I had no idea he would even notice them. Next time, I'll hide them behind the beer.

He never tires of our little game of hide-and-seek but seems to regard it as a necessary condition of life, while I have begun to keep a mental dossier of all the time I spend looking for things that are usually hiding in plain sight. For those who are sighted. In some way that I cannot even begin to contrive, he owes me.

We stopped for gas on the way to Guitar Center. The gas cap took that opportunity to haul ass and look for a better home. Did it really think it would fit on a Porsche or a Jaguar? By the time Flip figured out what that sloshing noise was, at nearly $4 a gallon, our gas cap was occupying that special place in hell where so many of our things reside. Even my talent for divining could not locate it. I redeemed myself shortly afterward when I bird dogged his lost sunglasses in Safeway. They were right where I thought they would be, in the chips aisle.

"You could not survive one day without me," I reminded him. "You would never find anything."

"It's not lost on me," he said.