You know what I mean.

Yeah, I have ADHD, which stands for Another “Duh, Honey!” Day.  And admittedly, a common ADHD diagnostic question is “How often have you had to hunt for your wallet, keys, or similar item this week?” (And I must admit that as I write, I can’t find either my phone or my keys. That’s not what inspired this little essay, but I’m getting ahead of myself.)

But that’s not quite it. There’s a pattern to this phenomenon, and I think everybody is familiar with it. After all, everybody (well, most normalish people) misplaces things–and  you have looked at the header for this post, and by now, you indeed know perfectly well what I mean.

The first time this happened, I was 18 years old, and on a late date with the love of my life. He was a student at Kings Point, the US Merchant Marine Academy; and he had to be back by a certain hour or he’d be sent to the stockade or something. So a friend offered to drive him. It was a longish drive, and it would be extra time to pet him and stare into–yeah, whatever. Of course, I wanted to go–but I couldn’t find my keys, which meant I was screwed in terms of getting back into my building. Looked all over. Finally, they couldn’t wait another minute.  I cried. (I was 18. Cut me some slack.)

So, the very next morning–or when I got up, more to the point, having petulantly gone to bed at 0-dawn:30–there were my keys, sitting on a shelf. I had searched there several times. I couldn’t figure it out. I later told a wiser friend about this; and she nodded sagely, and said, “Mm, yes. You sent them into the future. It happens sometimes. Chances are you shouldn’t have gone on that trip.” I pointed out that they hadn’t crashed into a ditch, but she argued that my presence would have changed the situation–and as modern physics tells us, this is true.

But as my life continued, so did my apparent desire to similarly save myself from all manner of badness. I’m no longer sure about Abby’s hypothesis re any positive effect or reason; unless it was imperative to the economy that I go out and buy a new one. But I kept sending stuff into the future anyway.

Other wiser souls have opined that it’s not actually us, or anything human at all, but gremlins. That’s what I’m going with now. (After all, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those who notice that they have lost half of them.)  These minor demons have an uncanny sense of what’s  going to screw us up when–and then sadistically rub our noses in our own failure to control our lives. But something recently happened that gave me hope for beleaguered humanity:

St.John–which, by the way, is pronounced SIN jun, if you care, which you probably don’t–is my MacBook, and over the past month, he got sicker and sicker. I hadn’t shelled out the $250 for AppleCare, but hardware was still under warranty, and so I called them.

The nice guy told me that it wasn’t likely to be my hard drive, and then suggested anyway that I re-install my system from the disk that came with my computer, in a packet entitled “Everything Else.”

This conversation was a blasphemy against the Lord God Steve, as it did actually concern software; but he said “I’m going to walk you through out of the goodness of my heart.”  But . . . I couldn’t find it–I will say that I did move this summer.  He gave me the basic two step instructions, saying that if I knew how to reset my PRAM, I could do this. (Thanks.) He said that absent the disk, I would have to go out and buy Snow Leopard all over again.

“You know that if I buy the disks, I’m going to find them immediately afterwards, right?”

“Yep.” He knew what I meant.

So after we hung up, I searched everywhere. Looked in all the random unpacked-ish boxes in the house. (And you know what I mean there, too.) But I couldn’t find them. I might have thrown them out in a fit of packing idiocy, but I’m not quite that much of an idiot. I knew damned well that they were lurking out there in the future, taunting me.

I went to the pathetic trouble of calling my alma mater’s tech support, and begging  to borrow them, as I had been told that Snow Leopard would run me $30 that I just don’t have. It would have taken ten minutes; I would be right there at the counter. . . but he really couldn’t do that. School would send him to the stockade with my teen boyfriend. (Although classier than Kings Point’s.)

But geeks are the salt of the earth, and he warned me that in fact the Snow Leopard disk probably wouldn’t do what I wanted.

“You know that if I do buy the disks, I’m going to find them immediately afterwards, right?”

“Yep.” He also knew what I meant.

He recommended that I schlep off to the Genius Bar at my Apple store, and I morosely made the call, figuring that anything was going to be a lot cheaper than the thousand+ bucks I had shelled out when I bought Singe. To my amazement and joy, they cheerfully said that minor software things like that they did for free.

So in didst I shlep. Found out that the well-meaning AppleCare guy was running 0 for 2, as Mr. Hard Drive, she was no longer mounting. (*boom chick*, no matter what you thought there.) So I did the I’m-still-under-warranty booty dance, and left the baby behind.

Now,  while I had been waiting for my turn at the Bar, I had been working on a piece of cross-stitch for a present. I was under a deadline, and so that next morning came the usual slide-to-home-plate of getting the damned thing finished. I needed some fabric to back it; went to its location in the linen closet–and . . .

. . . out slid “Everything Else.”

I knew without a shadow of the faintest of doubts that the gremlins had sent it into the future–because who in their wildest imaginings would have packed it in there?

But the little bastards screwed up!!!! Booyah!!!! Although it turned up right on schedule–on the very morning after it had been desired–

–I hadn’t actually needed it. And for once, the economy had not been enriched by any of my gremlin tribute.

The damned little sheeping bastards aren’t omniscient after all. There is a new dawn of hope for the human race.

And you know exactly what I mean.