January 10, 2001
Finding answers through lost causes
By GARRET LEIVA
Herald editor
Sometimes I'm just at a loss. Which is tad unfortuitous when you don't know your bank balance.
Lose. Loss. Lost. Nothing is worse than realizing you've temporarily misplaced something. Except the epiphany that, despite best intentions, you will always be a loser of tangibles and untouchables.
When it comes to misplaced things and missed opportunities, there have been losses both great and small. The losses have been many: lunch, track of time, one's temper, one's way, even oneself - metaphorically speaking. On the prepositional phrase side, I've been lost in, lost on, lost to, a lost cause and been told to get lost.
This weekend, however, it was simply a missing checkbook.
Now next to do-it-yourself dentistry, there is nothing more excruciating than grocery shopping. To put it mildly, I loath it - especially on a Saturday afternoon. This is the type of "Lost Weekend" that would drive Ray Milland straight to aisle nine.
I find it interesting that many still regard black holes - a place where neither light nor matter can escape - as hypothetical objects. Evidential, these great scientific minds have never been inside a 200,000 square- foot supermarket. Defying the space-time continuum, you go into one of these places for a toothbrush and come out two hours later $100 lighter.
Strangely, the next morning you find a 30-pack of toilet paper under the bathroom sink while brushing your teeth with your index finger.
This Saturday, after returning home from an epic excursion, we realized that our pocketbook had seemingly failed to checkout with us. A phone call to customer service yielded only an apologetic "no." So, like all lost causes, we retrace our steps in a parking lot the size of my boyhood hometown. It was a task that made Sisyphus's rock rolling look heavenly.
Sadly, wandering around a parking lot is not a new experience. When I was a young lad, my parents desperately searched for a glow worm finger puppet in the lot behind Allen's shoe store in Bay City. I also lost a brand-new Detroit Tigers baseball cap at a nondescript restaurant off I-75. Which made me cry, because back then the Tigers were over .500.
The greatest childhood loss, however, was the bedroom swapping swindle perpetrated by my older sister. While Steward paid $7,200,000 for Alaska and the Boston Red Sox traded Babe Ruth, I willingly gave up an additional two feet of room space. Talk about a loser.
When it came to sports, at least during my younger days, I was less than gracious about losing. My temple vein would pulse and my lower lip quiver at every strike out, ground out or tag out.
Of all my high school football seasons, the one game that is burned into my cerebral cortex is Atlanta 1987. Up 13-12 with less than two minutes in the fourth quarter, our team was on the verge of snapping an eight-year losing streak to the Huskies. A few years ago, feeling a bit nostalgic, my friends and I watched the game tape. We ejected the video with 1:50 left on the scoreboard clock.
While I've matured about missing things and last-minute losses, I'm still a baby when it comes to getting lost. Call me stubborn, bull-headed, obstinate or simply a man, but I refuse to ask for directions when I'm temporarily misplaced. For some inane reason, I'll drive in circles, around the block, even to Hell, Mich. and back before I'll stop for directions.
I'm convinced that even if there had been a Shell station on his way to the New World, Columbus wouldn't have pulled over the Ni¤a, the Pinta or the Santa Maria.
After thirty years, I've come to the realization that life is full of losses, tangible and untouchable. Love, innocence, a dollar's worth of change in the pop machine at work. Sometimes, losing something is the only way to find its true value; whether it's youth or a checkbook fallen beneath the front passenger seat.
Grand Traverse Herald editor Garret Leiva can be reached at 933-1416 or e-mail gleiva@gtherald.com.