Friday, July 3, 2009

Inexplicable, Implausible

I rarely lose things. Sure, I've been known to misplace things, for minutes, hours, day, weeks or months at a time. Inevitably, most of these temporarily missing items reappear when I least expect them to. At those moments I breathe a sigh of relief, both for not having completely lost my mind and for the restoration of the object to my life. But it has been months since a new, high quality black moisture wicking t-shirt has gone missing; after checking the washer and dryer I use in the basement of my art studio building, I went through all of my drawers, peered under my bed, ransacked my closet, and checked the lost and found at my yoga studio. Nada. It had disappeared. For awhile I tortured myself over my possible carelessness - maybe I had let my laundry linger in the washing machine and someone had helped themselves while I was upstairs, making art. And then I realized that I should not cause myself to suffer over a t-shirt, even if I had snagged it for just $15 at the GoLite gear sale shortly after moving to Colorado. Eventually I moved on, or so I thought.

But this morning, while getting dressed for a hike, I was looking for the sports bra I had purchased at that same gear sale and could not find it. I had just done a load of laundry at my studio and it was not among the clothing that I had scooped from the dryer and placed into my nylon laundry bag. Not again?! I chose something else to wear and left for the day. Returning to my apartment in the late afternoon, I found myself obsessing over this second missing piece of athletic gear, the same brand as that t-shirt. Not wishing to wait another day to possibly solve this mystery, I walked to my studio building this evening to check the washer and dryer. Both were empty.

My brain is trying to devise an explanation for the fact that two pieces of GoLite gear have vanished within in a few months of one another under similar circumstances. While it is possible that someone has helped themselves to my laundry, I can't imagine who it would be. Most of the artists in my building rarely venture into the basement, where the machines are located, and none of them are my size, not to mention that I have no basis to distrust them. And there have been more valuable pieces of clothing available for the picking, so even if someone were sneaking around and harvesting my stuff, why wouldn't they take more or different things?

Realizing I could drive myself crazy attempting to recover these items, I am going to try (again) to let go of these perplexing episodes, following the advice suggested by the brand itself. I will "GoLite", moving ahead without being bogged down by the mystery of my missing clothes.

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