We are forever losing shit. We joke that we have a kleptomaniac ghost in the house 🤣.
It's a running joke now that whenever me or my husband can't find something we look at the ceiling and scold the 'ghost' and demand they stop playing silly buggers and give it back.
I think that things can be right in front of you sometimes and you can't see them. If you think you've looked somewhere your brain goes nope, not there. If something isn't where you thought you left it you don't see it. Your brain sees what it expects to see. Just like reading back what you've written. Your brain reads what it thinks you wrote. That's why writers need proof readers because you often don't catch your mistakes. You read what you believe is there.
One time we were doing some DIY and the hammer 'vanished'. We did our scolding the ghost thing (we think we are funny but we are not) and next thing we know it's right there.
Did the 'ghost' take it and return it?
Of course not. 🤣
We were convinced it was somewhere else in the room and just didn't see it.
Until we took that second to be daft, sort of a reset I suppose? Fresh eyes, bit of daftness. Then we noticed it. Right where it had been since whichever one of us who had it last put it there.
It's a quirk of the human brain. Especially with the mundane.
You see what you expect to see. You read what you expect to read. You hear what you expect to hear.
Re nowhere in the house, nobody could have taken it etc I lost a rocking chair in a house move.
A teddy bear that was given when I was born has disappeared. I am convinced it's in my sister's house, she's adamant it's not.
I lost a couple of thousand pounds worth of resin jewellery stock. (I make jewellery)
We turned the house and the shed upside down. Went room by room. Methodically checked everything. Moved everything. It was nowhere. Three years later we're clearing and dismantling the shed and what do we find? A huge plastic box filled with my jewellery.
We had never seen it because we were convinced it was sealed in a big bag. We had seen the box but not seen the box iyswim.
We were looking for a bag. We had tunnel vision re that bag. I could describe it! So we didn't see the box. We looked at it, we moved it, but we didn't see it.
Imo people have too much faith in themselves when it comes to seeing what's in front of them.
Don't trust your eyes, basically.