When we were on our trip to Connecticut and Boston a couple of weeks ago, our expensive Nikon camera went missing. We had just arrived in Stratford and taken my mother-in-law to dinner at a little restaurant on Long Island Sound. After we dropped her back at her house, we drove to our hotel and unloaded the car. We could not find the camera. We looked in every crevice of the trunk. We looked on the floor in the back seat and on the floor in the front seat. I even looked under the seat. No camera. Since we remembered putting the camera in the trunk when we got to the restaurant, we figured we must have accidentally pulled it out of the trunk after we ate when we reached in for something else, and we left it on the street where we parked. I thought sure I would have seen it, though, because it had still been light when we left the restaurant. We called the restaurant to see if anyone had turned it in, but no one had.
We were so upset. The camera was fairly new and quite pricey, and we felt so stupid for losing it. How could we have been so careless? My husband and I spent the next couple of days apart while he attended to family business with his mother and I spent the time with my two best girlfriends. One girlfriend and I even went to Target to price a replacement for the lost camera. When my husband came to get me the next day, I told him we were going to Target and I was going to buy the camera again. I said, “Our camera is gone. It’s not coming back. We are going to buy a new one and get on with our vacation, and we will not talk about the lost camera again.”
We said goodbye to our friends and headed to Target on our way to Boston. About a block from the store, I reached under my seat in one last feeble attempt to find the camera. I felt something like a strap. I pulled on it, and out popped our camera case with the missing camera in it. I held it up. George could hardly hold onto the wheel. “Where did you find it?” he gasped. “It was under the seat,” I told him. “But I know I looked there.” George pulled into the parking lot. “Show me where you found it!” I got out of the car and looked under the seat. There was a little well there, a dip in the floor, and because it had been dark when we had searched the car, I hadn’t been able to see the camera case hiding in it. We were both giddy with relief. Then our giddiness turned to confusion. I know we had put the camera in the trunk, so how had it ended up under my seat? I also know I was not the one who had taken it out of the trunk, so that had to have been George. He didn’t remember removing the camera from the trunk, and I don’t remember him giving me the camera, but that is exactly what had to have happened. The missing camera was the topic of conversation for a week.
Fast forward to this past weekend and our visit to my brother’s. Friday night my brother and sister-in-law and my husband and I decided to go to a movie. Everyone but my sister-in-law was sitting in the car, waiting to leave. We waited. And waited. And waited. My brother went inside to find out what was keeping my sister-in-law. “I can’t find my glasses,” she said, in a panic. George and I got out of the car and went inside to help with the search. Kathy found her glass case, but her glasses were not in them. With some careful questioning by my brother to get my sister-in-law to retrace her steps, she finally located them on the nightstand next to their bed. We were able to make the movie just in time.
The next morning, however, when we came down to breakfast, Kathy had her glasses but couldn’t find her glass case. She searched all over the house. We all laughed because it was the opposite of the night before. This time, though, she couldn’t find the case anywhere in the house. “Maybe they’re under your seat in the car like our camera,” I joked. “You never know,” she laughed, though she was sure she had not taken her glass case with her the night before. For good measure, she went to the garage and came back laughing, glass case in her hand. “Guess where I found this?” she said, dumbfounded. From now on, if anything disappears, we are all going to check in that black hole under our car seat.
Coming East 
I’m so glad you found all the lost items! You haven’t seen our socks, have you?
Can you please find my wallet?
So glad your stories all had a happy ending, not like mine. About two weeks ago, I lost my wallet. I am still so upset that I don’t know if i can bring myself to blogging about it. We don’t drive here, so there is no black hole for me to search.
Maybe I’ll write about it sometime later. But so glad you found your camera. I know that feeling.
Oh, no! I will look under my seat, just in case. Losing my wallet is one of the things I worry about the most. Have you had to cancel all your credit cards, etc.?
Yes, they were all cancelled. Had to stay late because of the time difference. It bothers me to no end ’cause I had no idea how it happened. Mystery. Nightmare.
So glad nobody found them and started using them! What a mystery…
Maybe things are transported there miraculously… great post!
It would seem so, DAF.
Could you look for a Bette MIdler CD I am missing?! Thanks.
Haha! That cracked me up.
When I lose something, as many Catholics do, I ask St. Anthony to help me find it, and most of the time he comes through. My husband lost his pedometer that he carries in his pocket every day. He looked all over, checked all his pockets and all the unlikely and likely places. He was driving me crazy looking for it, so I finally asked St. Anthony to pitch in. A little later that day, I was bending over the basket where we collect our recycling to take it out to the larger bin, and saw something shiny in the bottom. There it was, his black pedometer, but it had landed in the basket with the back, which had a tiny strip of shiny metal, facing up. Otherwise I would never have seen it and it would have been dumped into the large recycle bin, never to be seen again. I hear that St. Anthony takes non-Catholics too, so anyone can ask for help 🙂
I will have to show your comment to my Catholic sister-in-law because she would really appreciate it. We Episcopalians tend to go straight to the Source, but in case He’s busy, I might have to call upon St. Anthony for intercession. Couldn’t hurt!
We have a vortex in our house. When things go missing, that is where they go. All we have to do is wait, and the vortex will spit it back out again.
I met my George when my four kids were in their teens. No kids and no marriage experience, he our lackadaisical approach to finding things astounded him. “Just wait,” I said. “the vortex will spit it out.” Sure enough, eventually lost items surface. (I’d tell you more, but I feel a blog-post coming on!)
Do you think that’s where ll the missing socks go?
I really had a laugh, reading this. So glad you found your camera. 🙂
You cannot imagine how sad we were when we thought we had lost it. That would have been $500 down the drain, not to mention another $500 to replace it!
I can well imagine how you felt, and the huge relief when you found it. 🙂
There are mysterious gremlins at work playing jokes on us! Love this post.
Or our own age-compromised memories!
I love stories such as these. Things like this is always happening to me. Take care and stay happy…
I’m much happier now that we found the camera.
So relieved that you found your camera! But, from trunk to the black hole… ? 🙂
I know! Can’t believe neither of us could remember what we had done with it!
I was going to ask you if you ever founf the camera when we were talking Sunday afternoon but the conversation went elsewhere. I am glad that you found it and the next time I think I have lost something I will check the blackhole under the seat.
My seat or your seat?
Cute story! I’m so relieved that you found your camera, especially BEFORE you bought a replacement!
Sometimes I think little “spirits” move things around just to keep us on our toes!
Or to make us crazy!
Don’t you just hate it when things disappear? Thank goodness you didn’t purchase a new one.
But we were sooo close, Georgette! I don’t know what possessed me to reach under that seat. I think it was my refusal to believe we would have been so careless as to leave the camera on the street by the restaurant.