What’s on my mind? Lost stuff.
BINK! That’s the sound of a pill. A big pill. A bright blue pill. A pill that cost me $6, which is not exactly chump change. I take two of these pills every day, so I treat them like gold.
I dropped my morning pill on the bathroom counter, where it leaped like a flea to bounce once - just once - on the bathroom floor. I tracked both jumps - the first, on the counter, the second, on the floor.
Our bathroom has nowhere for an escapee pill to hide - no heat register, no secret place behind the bathroom cabinet, no open drawer, no unplugged sink. I got on my knees, head close to the floor, and searched. I checked behind the toilet. I checked the clearance under the door. I checked inside the shower.
You’ve had this happen. Everyone has. My $6 pill was gone.
BINK! That’s the sound of a sock, lost in the laundry. Why is it always a sock? Why not a dish towel? Why not a T-shirt? It’s always, always a sock. I put its mate on the top of my other folded socks to be reunited with the missing one. I know this will never happen. It never does.
BINK! That’s the sound of a set of plastic tops, newly bought with matching containers. How and why would one top immediately disappear?
BINK! That’s the sound of just the right lid, set aside moments earlier for its waiting jar. Where’s that lid? Gone.
CLINK! That’s the sound of money, running like water through clumsy fingers. CLINK!-CLINK!-CLINK!-CLINK!-CLINK!
Money’s easy to find (“Look! Here’s that quarter I dropped!”), but pills and socks and lids vanish into the ether.
Do you believe in parallel universes? Many scientists do. I do, too. Parallel universes are just like our own, but undetectable.
In the universe parallel to ours, someone has just found an expensive blue pill they don’t remember taking from its bottle. Someone has just slipped on a pair of socks, wondering where the lost one turned up, but glad it did. Someone has just snapped a top on a plastic container, or twisted a lid onto a jar - simple actions, taken for granted.
And in that parallel universe, someone right now is searching for an umbrella, certain it was in its stand a second ago. Or looking everywhere for a set of keys, a pair of glasses, a grocery list, a flashlight, an earring, a book, a glove ... None of those things ever to be seen again, until they materialize here, light years away.
© Nicole Parton, 2019
