Finding it before losing it

What's almost as good as finding something you lost? Finding something you didn't know you'd lost. I must have dropped a glove coming home from work, because when I took the trash out a couple of hours later, I found that someone had helpfully wedged it into the bannister of the stairs.

I've lost a couple of things since moving to New York, which is notable because I almost never lose anything. This is in contrast to my brother in his youth, who somehow managed to lose a brand-new soccer ball before he'd even had the chance to play with it, and, on another occasion, a whole shopping bag of Capri-Suns entrusted to his care (the Capri-Suns were very important because our whole thirsty family was looking forward to drinking them for the first time). My brother has since turned into a responsible adult who doesn't lose so much as his temper. But I still think about that soccer ball every now and then...

My most devastating loss happened a couple of years ago. I dropped my Wenger Swiss Army Knife that I'd been using as a keychain for almost 20 years on the street, right outside the apartment. My dad had bought the knife for me in 1988 in a mall in Singapore, on our way to Australia. It was small and discreet, almost a trinket, with a virtually useless pair of scissors built in. But it went with me to six different countries over the next eight years. I used it to open letters in Indiana, to cut leeches in half in the jungles of Borneo, to slice strawberries in Perth, and to remove tags from new clothes in Hong Kong. I only stopped traveling with it after September 11, when it became impossible to carry on an airplane. After I finally lost it in New York, the bitter lesson I learned was this:

For the love of all your favorite keepsakes, stop wearing jeans with holes in their pockets!