I’ve often complained in this column about misplacing my cellphone. But I’m not going to do that today. No, today I’m going to complain about misplacing everything else. This morning it was my paring knife. And I’d go so far as to say it was my favorite of the three paring knives I once had. I say “once had” because one of the others has been missing for two years.
If you’re like me, and I always feel better if someone else is, you have a hierarchy for misplaced items. And each step on the ladder comes with costs. There’s the time you spend trying to find missing items and the money it takes to replace them if you don’t. There’s the embarrassment of admitting you’ve misplaced your glasses for the third time that day and the groveling you have to do when you’ve blamed your spouse for misplacing the TV remote and now you want their help to find it.
My paring knives are a level one item. They’re not expensive so I had three of them. Consequently when knives one and two disappeared, I didn’t bother to look for them. I just grabbed the next one, trusting that the missing ones will show up someday. And they probably will, though it could be many years from now when we’re packing to move to a new home.
Of course, given my history, it’s inevitable that I’ll eventually lose paring knife number three. Then I’ll tear my kitchen apart looking for all three of them or, more likely, I’ll use a substitute. Level one items have substitutes. A steak knife can act as a paring knife in a pinch. Just like a phone can do double duty as a flashlight and a shoe can stand in for a hammer, though the reverse isn’t true. And I wouldn’t want to build a house with one.
The point is, if—when—I lose paring knife number three, I probably won’t look very hard for it, or for that matter, replace it, until the day I cut my hand trying to peel a potato with a steak knife. Or realize I’ve misplaced my last steak knife.
Level two items—tape, staples, scissors and the like—have no substitute and when I need them, I need them right now. So when they go missing, which they do with annoying frequency, I buy more. What else can I do? I can’t glue a package shut before I mail it. That wouldn’t work. Plus I can’t find the glue. That explains why I have upwards of 45 rolls of packing tape. At least I think I do. Right now I can’t locate even one of them.
You wouldn’t think there’s a high financial cost for level two items. But consider all that packing tape, the half dozen bottles of glue, the 10 or 12 pairs of scissors, etcetera that have gone missing in my home. I could buy a nice level three item with all the money I’ve got tied up in inventory.
Level three objects are expensive, irreplaceable or just downright inconvenient to lose. Some are all three. I’ve spent a lot of time searching for a wide range of level three items running the gamut from my checkbook to my car in large parking lots. There’s just no substitute for prescription eyeglasses. And I can’t afford to replace my cellphone every time it goes missing. Not when I have so much money invested in packing tape and scissors.
Dorothy Rosby is the author of Alexa’s a Spy and Other Things to Be Ticked off About, Humorous Essays on the Hassles of Our Time and other books. Contact her at www.dorothyrosby.com/contact.