I’m trying to talk The Lovely Mrs.
Taylor into starting a private detective agency. She would be so good at it and
heaven knows we could use the extra cash.
Why a detective, rather than a car
wash attendant, Navy Seal or matador? Simple. Mrs. Taylor knows how to find
things. I assume this skill will easily transfer to finding clues, lost
children or evidence of a spouse cheating on his or her alleged beloved.
Mrs. T, as far as I know, has no
special training in this area. She’s never been a cop, never even worked as a
school crossing guard. But there’s no denying she has the gift.
It could be a psychic thing. You
know, Stephen King-y mental powers that help her locate stuff by just humming
“ohhhmmmm” under her breath and waving her index finger around. I’ve never seen
her do this, but she could be hiding it from me, waiting until I’m not looking
to pull out her supernatural bag of tricks.
Or maybe she possesses some sort of extraordinary
gestalt; she glances around a room, sees a bunch of seemingly unrelated stuff,
and then is somehow able to put it all together into a coherent vision
revealing a lost item’s location.
However, she does it, it’s downright
spooky.
I first noticed it not long after we
took up residence together. Before that, I was single. I knew where everything
was in my little apartment. My shoes were here, my socks were there, my week-old
pot of leftover cream of mushroom soup was there. Everything had its place and
I knew where that place was.
Then I moved in with Mrs. T.
Suddenly, I couldn’t find my backside with both hands and a flashlight.
The first problems arose in the
refrigerator. It was a Tuesday. I knew there was Genoa salami in there
somewhere. I looked and looked. For a long time. And yes, ladies, I really
tried to find it. Really.
“Honey,” I finally said. “Did you eat
the last of the salami?”
“It’s in there,” she said. “In the
meat keeper. Under the second shelf.”
I looked in the meat keeper. Under
the second shelf. No salami.
“I can’t find it.”
Heaving a heavy sigh, which so far as
I know can only be accurately voiced by a wife forced to attend to her
husband’s needs, she came into the kitchen, edged me out of the way, reached into
the fridge and pulled out the salami.
“Where was it?” I said.
“In the meat keeper, under the second
shelf.”
As God is my witness, that salami had
NOT been there 15 seconds earlier.
This sort of thing happened over and
over. There was food in the refrigerator, I was told, but for the life of me I
could not find it. Mrs. T tried to explain her “secret” to me, but frankly, it
was unfathomable.
Apparently, if I wanted to find
something in the refrigerator, I was now required to “move stuff around.” Large
items, she said, sometimes obscured smaller items. A gallon of milk, say, could
easily hide a jar of cocktail olives. If I wanted the olives, I had to move the
milk.
I know, I know, sounds crazy to me,
too. For me – and for most husbands, I’m guessing – those olives might as well
be invisible.
But the problem extends far beyond
the refrigerator. The bedroom, my office, even the garage – typically MY domain
– were not sacrosanct.
I would put a new tire on my bicycle,
then leave the tools lying on the garage floor (where they belong!), only to
come back later and find them all missing! Sure, I would later locate them in
my tool box. But that’s not where I left them, so finding them again was really
just a matter of luck.
Shoes I left under the piano in the
living room would magically relocate to my closet. Mrs. T would know where they
were, but I would not.
If I left some cheese on the kitchen
counter (so I could find it later, just in case I needed a bedtime snack) it
would be gone when I went back for it. Where to? Well, the refrigerator full of
invisible food, that’s where!
It’s little wonder I’m losing weight
lately.
At any rate, I’m hoping Mrs. Taylor’s
detective agency keeps her busy enough that she doesn’t have time to keep
things tidied up around here. Maybe I’ll be able to make a sandwich without
organizing a search party.
(616) 730-1414
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