There should be a word for the complete inability to find the Sharpie you used not five minutes ago where the hell is it it was right here I swear to god
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Happens less often now that I write very few checks, but it used to be that if I wanted to write a check using my duplicate checkbook, I could find nothing but Sharpies. On the other hand, if I needed a Sharpie, the same pen holder had nothing but ballpoints.
At 47, I have mostly managed to arrange my life so that this happens very infrequently*, but I've already lost enough things to last several lifetimes.
*with an unfortunate side effect of making me furious if anyone moves anything in my home 👺
My mom made me a sewing tote with a pair of scissors attached to the bag with a long piece of elastic and they’re the only scissors I haven’t lost yet :D
My mom sewed a pair of Fiskars snippers to one end of a wide (2 1/2") ribbon and a pincushion to the other end. You drape it around your neck so that the tools are there when you're at the machine.
One reason there are five or six pairs of scissors in my house. Can’t find the one I just had in my hand? Go to another room and get the one that disappeared last time.
Woking as coined by Douglas Adams is close but not quite there. WOKING (vb.) To enter the kitchen with the precise determination to perform something only to forget what it is just before you do it.
Sharpies can teleport, and the manufacturer exploits this to save on manufacturing costs. 99.9% of Sharpies don’t actually exist; the real Sharpies are frantically teleporting all over the place, pretending to be 1000 times as many Sharpies, and are often unable to keep up
The number of times this happened when we were packing my parents' place. Convinced there are still a dozen of the damned things we left there... somewhere.
whereas I could be haunted by poltergeists or possessed by demons and I would never, ever know about it, because whenever things move around or small objects disappear or I hear strange eerie noises or the walls start bleeding, I blame the cats
That explains my mom's infallible advice that cleaning is the best way to find a lost item (because you have to pick things up and move them around when you clean).
I spent 20 minutes yesterday looking for my water thermos. It was on the coffee table. I was not looking down that low until Dog 2 drew my eye to her sitting right behind it. If she hadn't done that, I'd still be looking.
When Sarah was in the ER with her broken ankle they rolled in the splint supplies cart and I cracked up because there were three pairs of scissors cable tied to the side of the cart so they couldn't walk off
When I was in training to run a nuclear reactor there was an actual set of keys that the shift supervisor held when the plant was shutdown that was needed to unlock for startup.
Even after putting them on a ring with a ridiculously large tag the Shift Supes kept leaving the facility with them.
1/2
I started putting in electronic staplers (not super cheap but tethered by power cord and pain to pull out of outlet) in my labs because people kept walking off with the desk staplers.
I usually find it under a cat, because they like to occupy anything that takes our attention. But while we were moving I was pretty sure I packed them severalmany times.
I refer to this as the portable black hole phenomenon. Whatever you are looking for has been sucked up by said black hole, which accompanies you everywhere (it also spits items out at random, which is why you find them three days later in a random place).
pro tip: the black hole is an illusion. you think you lost it because instead of the usual place (which may or may not be determined yet), you set it down in a random place, which is also where you’ll find it.
So instead of a portable black hole my house has a resident spirit that does the same thing. If you ask the right way you usually get the item back, although sometimes it can take a day or two. Sometimes you get a *different* missing item. I am absolutely serious, you can believe me or not.
I do not know its name. A friend of my girlfriend gave me the phrase that usually works and addresses the spirit as "shishiga" which is I guess like a child? I can't find much on that when I search tho. the usual phrase is "shishiga, shishiga, play with it and give it back."
it's a pretty benign spirit overall but it likes to fuck with my as-needed pill bottles. Literally one night I couldn't find a bottle I knew was on my desk. I looked, my wife looked, my best friend looked, it was NOT there. the next day i reached for a different bottle and picked up the missing one.
I have a few in my "pen jar" and I always end up using more than just the first one I started with. 🙄 at least they haven't migrated into the wash in over two decades (hastily making all the appeasements to the Sharpie Deities to avoid this at all costs)😅😅😅
Generally when using tape at work, I make point of using masking tape which I wear around my wrist like a bracelet, because I can and do lose the cello tape dispensers.
This is why I have approximately 57 sharpies and 20 pairs of inexpensive reading glasses. I put my costly prescription reading glasses down once and could not find them for months because they were in the pocket of a raincoat I only wear to dressed up occasions like funerals 🤦🏽♀️
Swear to god I have done this with a No. 4 plane. Which is an assemblage of cast iron, steel, brass, and wood, nearly a foot long and weighing the thick end of two pounds.
Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle for the quality of position, as applied to stationary and other small items, combined with Schroedinger's Cat because you have to look everywhere twice before you collapse the waveform and find it exactly where it shouldn't be (a well known attractor).
Douglas Adams had a whole thing about the biros that constantly went missing. A wormhole to a planet where biros can slip away and live a biro-oriented life to the full. So everyone now puts biros on his gravestone.
Somehow the US edition of "ballpoint pen" doesn't quite work.
I had to change my locks because I put down my keys somewhere and. Several years later I found them. On top of the chest of drawers. In my bedroom. Where I go every day.
Yes, I did just make that German word up. BUT that's how German compound words work. I didn't break any grammar rules, so this is a word that now exists.
There is another universe next door, where planets are formed not from cosmic dust, but from our universe's missing pens, paper clips, that book you were reading, and odd socks.
I blame the blue guys. Remember the Twilight Zone episode from the 80s reboot where the guys in blue zentai suits built a new set for every minute? They always borrow the damn Sharpies
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I cannot locate a single sharpie in my apartment, nary a one.
*with an unfortunate side effect of making me furious if anyone moves anything in my home 👺
Adhd
IT'S HELL
Or just "ADHD"
It is the one sewing tool I have never lost.
in-di-scrib-able -- the inability to scribe because of the invisibility of the writing utensil
which causes a
shar pain -- when it's specifically because it's a missing sharpie
overall, when it's happened more than once, the whole experience might be called
un-re-mark-able.
Sharpies can teleport, and the manufacturer exploits this to save on manufacturing costs. 99.9% of Sharpies don’t actually exist; the real Sharpies are frantically teleporting all over the place, pretending to be 1000 times as many Sharpies, and are often unable to keep up
U R welcome.
That’s been a game changer for me. Instead of looking all over, I look close to me…but behind things.
I can bring my breakfast into my office, leave my office, come back and be like, “WHERE’S MY BREAKFAST?!?!?”
Reader: It’s usually behind my open laptop screen on my desk.
Even after putting them on a ring with a ridiculously large tag the Shift Supes kept leaving the facility with them.
1/2
So the solution was to put a low-dose rad source on the key ring such that it would be detected when exiting site.
Also kept most shift supes from just putting key ring in pants.
Hospitals generate a field that makes equipment grow legs and walk off.
ADHD superpowers. We can haz them, yes.
problem is, it forgets where it borrowed from, so it returns it in a different spot. XD
expert tip: always put it in the usual place
my antacids fell down the black hole recently and aren’t anywhere in the house and i know they’re in the house!
“It has to be in arms reach somewhere!” - no. It has left the universe, never to be seen again.
Learned this from a costume maker, & I use it every year 😁
Sharpiegonebyebyeverfucken
LOL
Ian: could I have a spoon please darling? xx
Me: I did hand you one?
Ian: I am an idiot 😅
Ian: It was in my hand
Me: 🤣
Me: Love you. We are not braining good today.
I found it in the jambalaya. Would you like me to check my jambalaya for your sharpie?
Somehow the US edition of "ballpoint pen" doesn't quite work.
Good to get my bottle opener keyring back tho.
(Impossibility to find pen again)
Yes, I did just make that German word up. BUT that's how German compound words work. I didn't break any grammar rules, so this is a word that now exists.
Spent TWO HOURS trying to figure out where that thing was, and I had walked past it multiple times over the course of those two hours.
Object blindness is a heck of a thing.