Where The Hell Are The Spoons? (And Other Things That Go Missing)

It’s a mystery larger than the cosmos, more profound than questioning the meaning of life: Where the hell are the spoons?

Some things that normally come up missing here and there are just normal facts of life. Your keys will never be on the hall table where you left them, especially if you’re late for work. You will never again see those socks’ missing mates. (Ever.) Once in a blue moon, you will find the TV remote on the bathroom counter or in the kitchen beside the refrigerator. However, there are just some anomalies that only happen in child-infested households. Random objects that disappear more mysteriously than in all the history of the Bermuda Triangle.

Spoons. I never lost an entire set of flatware before having children. Sure, I may have accidentally trashed a fork, once or twice in 30 years, but now? Good luck finding a spoon, even after all the dishes have been washed and put away. I can buy a new cheap set of spoons once every month, and still run into days where there are two spoons in the drawer at any given time. Is there a spoon troll? Is he the second cousin twice removed from the laundry gnome that eats all the socks?

Sippy cups. Sippy cups (much like the TV remote, but worse) need to come with tracking devices or homing beacons, or even a pager beep like old school cordless phones use to have. If you’ve ever found a three week old sippy cup (that unfortunately was not empty) behind the couch, you know what I mean. It’s not even worth saving. (Or smelling. Pick it up and throw it away, and go buy another one. Trust that. ) At the height of our sippy cup era, I once counted 17 sippy cups in the cabinet, in all their neon rainbow and BPA-free glory. Shortly thereafter, we were again down to three. THREE. Well, to be honest, it was more like 3 cups and 47 lids. I still have no idea where all the cups went or where all those lids came from.

Scissors and tape. I don’t know what my kids are constructing back there in the secrecy of their playroom, but whatever it is requires massive amounts of scotch tape and seems to be annihilating scissors at a rate of 2-3 pair every month or so. I have no idea where it goes, or what they’re doing with it. Or if I should be afraid. All I know is that we’re single-handedly keeping the tape industry alive, and somewhere out there, there are 14234 pairs of Friskar scissors. And probably about the same number of nail clippers and tweezers, come to think of it. I have nightmares about what they may be doing with all the hoarded clippers, tweezers, scissors and tape. I can tell you that it’s most definitely NOT personal grooming, but beyond that, your terrifying guess is just as good as mine.

Kids’ shoes. Little kids have a tendency to discard shoes whenever and wherever they deem fit. I try to teach them to put them up, and if I see one laying around, I pick it up and put it where it goes. Nevertheless, we always seem to be missing a shoe when it comes time to walk out the door. To combat this, because I’ve played this game before, I bought my Kindergartener FOUR new pair of shoes at the beginning of the school year, thinking to avoid the last-minute, here comes the bus, get your shoes on, I can’t find my other one, Mom where’s my other shooooe, bullshit that always happens. You can guess how that played out. Now I have four mate-less shoes strewn across the floor on Tuesday morning at 6:53am. Note to self for next year: Get them all the same style and color, so at least they’ll appear to be a mated pair!

Band-Aids. Why is the band-aid box always empty? No one is being slashed, trashed or otherwise mutilated here on a daily basis, but you’d be hard pressed to know that given the amount of band-aids I am forced to keep on hand. I can’t even remember the last injury any of my kids had that drew blood, but you can bet for damn sure that boo boo got a band-aid regardless. And they don’t even ask for them anymore; they just grab one out of the medicine cabinet and slap it on, conveniently neglecting to tell anyone they grabbed the last of the stash. Which leaves me standing here with blood oozing from the tip of my finger from a kitchen mishap with nary a bandage to be found.

I’ve never actually calculated the cost of all these things that keep coming up missing or misplaced, but I’m pretty sure over the years combined, it might equal a college education for at least one kid. In fact, if I’d known how much I’d spend just replacing missing things, I could have started a separate savings fund to cover our replenishing needs. Or bought stock in spoons. I’d be a thousand-aire by now, surely.

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