When I Can't Find That One Damn Book ...

I've never been too good at finding lost things. When I was a boy (10? 11?), I lost a Timex I'd gotten for my birthday. Gray band. I loved the thing (though apparently not enough to keep track of it). One day it was just ... gone.

Not long afterward, going through my parents' things while they were away (everyone has done that, right?), I found it in one of my mother's dresser drawers. Apparently, she'd put it aside for that day when I would be mature enough to remember how to keep track of important things.

I don't think I'm there yet, Mom.

Just yesterday I lost a favorite ballpoint pen. I checked my coffee shop hangouts (nope), the car (nope), assorted impossible places (nope). So I had to pop for another one.

But the thing that's really annoying me right now is the loss/misplacement of a key book that I need--and I need it right now.

It's called Fanny Wright: Rebel in America, a book I read a number of years ago (okay, nearly two decades ago) when I was smokin' in the Full Fire of my obsession with Mary Shelley and Frankenstein. As I've been writing, now and then, on this blog, Mary and Fanny Wright met in 1827 (nearly a decade after Frankenstein) when Fanny tried to convince Mary to go to America with her (the reasons I will get into later in a subsequent blog post).

I've been writing in that blog series ("Frankenstein Sundae," a VERY ROUGH DRAFT of a memoir about chasing Mary, et al.) about this meeting, but for the life of me I cannot find that book, though I know it has sat on my Mary shelves behind me, staring at me for nearly twenty years.

And more annoying? I have notes on the book ... but, of course, I need the whole thing now to double-check some details.

After some desultory days of checking for it--all places possible and impossible--I've given up and have just now ordered the (damn) book from Amazon. So ... "Frankenstein Sundae" will be on hiatus until then.

And I know one thing with absolute certainty: Moments after I unpackage the new copy, the old one will announce itself and somehow re-appear in the most obvious spot I've checked a thousand times.

But I will handle that maturely, with the dignity befitting a 71-year-old man--a husband, father, grandfather.

And then I will scream naughty words that will bring Joyce running ...