Lost and Found

I was in the school car park one morning and noticed one of the mummies, T, looking a little bewildered. Now I knew that she hadn’t lost her car, as it is one of the biggest in the school (and she was standing by it), but she looked forlorn and so I approached her and enquired what was the matter. Her reply surprised me somewhat, ‘I’ve lost a Lettuce’ she announced, ‘It was in my shopping, in the back of the car, and now I can’t find it…’ and off she wandered.

 

Now on reflection this is not as strange as it may sound.  Often I have lost things in the back of my car and indeed my house, never to be seen again.  Anyone with a child will be familiar with the cry ‘MUUUUUM, where’s my…..’ and often the object in question is less than two feet away from the questioner.  I regularly ‘lose’ things in my fridge – a tasty bit of Camembert, or a bar of chocolate gets hidden at the back (where G doesn’t tend to find it) - for a quick secret snack. Middle Son regularly ‘loses’ his toothbrush, only to have his mum triumphantly ‘find’ a new one from a pack she has in the bathroom, Little Man loses nothing – even when he has – proclaiming that he knows where it is, even when he doesn’t…and Eldest Son this week announced that he had lost his games shirt.  This is the same games shirt that has survived multiple rugby matches, several hundred miles on a school bus and a severe dunking in a weir on the River Thames, and yet it is lost somewhere in our house…Mind you, this is still not bad, as two of the mums I know have yet to find full games kits- still in their bags- left on public transportation.  

 

And when it comes to animal ownership, the game of Lost and Found ramps up even more.  Pre-Muttley, we had the cats, a goldfish and a hamster.  The cats regularly found things to bring in to the house, even things that weren’t lost, like mice and pigeons, sometimes still alive and a little confused to be plonked underneath a sofa.  The goldfish lived in a permanent state of surprise as he swam in and out of his SpongeBob Squarepants castle. With a memory of less than 30 seconds, he lost his house…and then found it again…lost it…and oh joys, there it was again!  He forgot he hated the fish food, and then found out that he did… and so on.  The hamster went through a Houdini phase and worked out how to open the top loading door of her cage, and I luckily used to find her before the cats did  – once she was following me down the stairs.  We solved that problem by weighting the door with the heaviest book to hand, and by the time she died at a ripe old age she had devoured nearly two thirds of the Encylopedia of Wartime Machinery.

The kids came downstairs one day to feed the fish and shouted ‘Mum, we’ve lost the goldfish!’ Thinking that we had a death on our hands, I approached them with what I thought was a sympathetic look on my face, until I realised that Ringo had actually done a bunk.  We searched everywhere… and found him under the telly still alive.  Who knows how he got there – but TomCat was looking very pleased with himself …

I brought up a piece of toast two weeks ago to Little Man as I needed to get him out of bed and somewhere fairly fast. Putting it down in his room I announced that he had ten minutes to turn it all around and then walked out.  Lo and behold, in ten minutes he was downstairs and asking what was for breakfast. Exasperated I ran upstairs and could I find the toast – no – could I find the plate – no… (He had a new piece of toast in the car…)  Tidying up his room today I was a little distracted by some of his old school work (what would a teacher have thought as he scrawled I love my Mummy because she lets me get the washing out of the washing machine and put it in the tumble drier) and noticed too late that Muttley was happily chowing down on something.  He had found the two week old fluffy toast – it was under the bed, still on its plate.

I never did discover if T found her lettuce…