How I Found My Rainjacket
It really makes no sense. And I wasn't even looking for it, even though it rained today. I've been looking ALL OVER for my rainjacket since last summer, finding it nowhere, and not understanding how I lost it, since I never use it. I thought I must have taken it to Friend C's lakehouse last summer at some point, anticipating rain, and it had somehow never made it back, even though I never used it.

Just disappeared. I've looked through every piece of luggage I own. I've looked through the Jeep several times. Every once in awhile I get a brilliant idea of where I think it might be, and I look, but it's not there.

I spent a good part of my weekend cleaning out and organizing my office. I bought some storage boxes at Ikea, and I worked through all the papers I had crammed in the closet in my office. I made a huge mess everywhere. But, it was for the sake of organizing it back into containers that would clean everything up real nice-like.

In the closet was the box of stuff I brought home from my last job at the homeless shelter.... over a year ago. I had brought the stuff home after cleaning out my desk at work, and just put it away in the closet. I didn't want to deal with it. It contained various desk items, my performance review (not great, and I kept it because of how hard I worked to receive that not-great review for my wasted efforts), a list of brainstorming ideas that I presented to my boss at one point about how to make the golf tournament actually RAISE MONEY (he ignored all of the ideas, and that year the tournament brought in less money than ever before).

And, the box also contained several love letters from some of the homeless men. Sadly, a few of the men over the course of my 2.5 years of working at the shelter became a little too attached to the Tyrant, and they decided to profess this in various ways via the written word. A couple of letters, a card, and one "poem". These written professions of love completely creep me out. Yet, I keep them for severalfold reasons. Mainly because if anything ever happens to me because I'm still secretly being stalked by one of these guys, I want evidence somewhere in my house of where it started and who these guys are. I have now put the letters away in a drawer.

Aack.

Anyway, also in the box were several golf balls. My boss at the shelter was an avid golfer (people always describe people who do things a lot as "avid", although I'm not really sure that's a great descriptor for such things. It's kind of a dumb word. It always confused me when I worked on the AVID video editor in college. I didn't understand at first that AVID stood for something, and it did not mean that you had to be an editing enthusiast in order to use that machine).

Um, anyway, my boss had given me a bunch of golf balls because I golf on occasion, and he was always trying to get me to golf more. I brought the golf balls home. I figured I would give them to my dad, who golfs a bit more (and also loses a bit more golf balls) than I do.

So today, as I cleaned out my office and the closet in my office, I gathered these golf balls and took them out to the garage. I opened one pocket in my golf bag, saw that it wasn't the "golf ball" pocket, and then I opened the other pocket to put the golf balls into the pocket.

In this pocket, I found something. Didn't know what it was. I pulled it out.

It was my rainjacket.

I have absolutely no recollection of ever putting my rainjacket in my golf bag. I don't know why I would. I can't remember the last time I played golf, or if that would have even been the last time I looked in the pocket or put the rainjacket in there. It's been months, if not a year since the last time I golfed.

So, to sum up. If I hadn't gotten a new job a year ago, and I hadn't quit my job at the shelter, I would not have cleaned out my desk and brought home the golf balls that led me to open my golf bag and discover my rainjacket. It would still be lost.

Good thing I quit that job last year and cleaned out my office today. I think it's supposed to rain again tomorrow.

C.T.