Lost and found and found

Three things went missing the past few months. My passport, the van registration, and a fork.

Whenever this happens I’m still amazed how things can disappear in such a small space. There are only so many places a thing can be in the Rolling Steel Tent. That gets me wondering if the errant objects left the van somehow.

Also, as always, I find things when I’m not looking for them. After all, checking the most likely places is pointless when something is obviously in an unlikely place.

I found the fork while rotating my mattress head-to-toe (something I do about twice a year). The fork was wedged at the junction of the mattress, the bed platform, and the cabinet from which it had slid at some point.

The passport was a more troubling matter. I have a passport card as well, so I’ve been able to return to the US after my visits to Mexico, but still… It’s best not to have one’s passport traveling the world with someone else.

I remembered the last time I had used the passport. Afterward I had placed it in a box where I toss my wallet and key. But the box is dangerously close to the Gap of Doom. If it had fallen in there (despite the chunk of foam blocking most of the gap) retrieving it would mean a ton of disassembly and reassembly of the cabinet — or using one of those snaky cameras and a grabber thing.

But yesterday, while fiddling with the liner in my silverware drawer, there was the passport, way at the back, behind a Tupperware container. What the…?

As for the registration, I know I had it when I was pulled over for speeding in a school zone. (It was the first day of school at a time that was still summer to me: August 1. The sheriff’s deputy let me go with a caution.) Since then I had believed it was in the glove box with my proof of insurance. Well, beliefs are not facts. Was it in the door pocket? No. In the owner’s manual folder in the door pocket? No. Stuck between the map of the Big Horn Mountains and the paperwork for the engine replacement and my last two tire purchases? No. Those were likely places, therefore wrong.

Had I accidentally tossed it with some of the irrelevant and expired crap in the glove box. Maybe. Probably.

So my choices are to do the bureaucratic hokey-pokey with New Mexico Motor Vehicles or to drive flawlessly until next year’s registration comes. Or I can count on stumbling upon it while not looking for it.