A few days ago, I lost my SIM card. I hate losing things, but even more than that, I hate being dragged along with that eternal wonder. I don't care if it doesn't turn up, I just want to know where it is.
We can all relate to losing things, yet we constantly judge each other, "How did that happen?"
Where do lost things go?
Here's what I think: There's an underground city somewhere, for lost objects. Something gets lost, and POOF - it appears underground. It gets found, and POOF - it returns to its owner. The inhabitants of this city would most likely be lost children who were never found, and that's where they grow up, and that's where they live. And here and there they find a lost sandwich for breakfast or a half-eaten apple. They find blocked credit cards, remote controls, winning lottery tickets, plenty of cash and most of all, mail - lots and lots of it. A constant rain of sealed envelopes floods the roads of the skyless city. No sky, but there are floating clouds of memories and dreams. Memories that have long been lost by dementia and dreams that no one remembers.
Maybe there's a secret queue to the city, where you can give your name and ID number, and ask for all your belongings back. The lost children provide you with everything you've ever lost.
"Here are your 58 pairs of sunglasses, 846 cigarette lighters, 3,647 ballpoint pens, a T-shirt from a music festival and a box full of cash."
But not everything gets returned. I guess you don't get the big things back, like limbs, senses, sanity or virginity, these rarely come back. Like your tonsils, your appendix, your love handles, no one wants to touch and file those. Like your trust in the government, your status, hopes, or essential documents you were asked to send to the Taxman, those are long gone.
By retracing my steps, I returned to the bedside table between search sessions. The more I searched, the stranger the places I searched got. I had already looked in all the obvious places and found myself looking in the toaster's cracks, or in the pockets of jeans I hadn't worn in weeks. If you ask why - six pockets. I didn't want to live with regrets.
In the end, I found it inside a box of pills that was lying on the dresser. Don't ask me how it got there, I can't say. I can say that I found the card just in time, right before I was about to lose my mind. No one wants to lose that.
