secret compartment option
I've never owned a Debit/ATM card. I don't deny their usefulness, but Ell has one so I never had a need for another. Tuesday she gave me her card to get gas in the car. When I got home from work I couldn't find the card, but assumed it was in the pile of work stuff I was carrying. It had been in the car when I left work so it could only be one of two places: with my work stuff or still in the car. I went through all my papers and the card wasn't there so I went out to the car to look for it.
After five minutes of seat sliding, glove box emptying, car mat overturning, and some grumbling, the card was still lost. Ell came out and together we repeated all of the above. No luck. The ashtray (coin cup in our car) hides under a sliding cover below the radio and heater controls. When she slid back the cover to see if the card was in the ashtray (it wasn't) she noticed a tiny gap where the lid slid into the console. The gap was no wider than a couple pieces of paper laying flat. There was no way a card could fit into the slot. All our other options were spent, so we got out a screwdriver and took off the side plastic panels to see if the tiny slot had eaten our card.
Imagine our surprise when we not only found our debit card, but two credit cards (we cancelled all our credit cards almost four years ago), eight business cards, parking permits from training I did in Cleveland and Youngstown three years ago, mini baseball cards from Cracker Jack boxes (we never eat Cracker Jacks), a couple honey-do lists, a magnet from the Main Street Theatre, and a CD that wasn't ours. That sliding lid had been stealing things for five years and neatly stacking them in a secret compartment directly behind itself right below the dashboard.
As I relayed the story that night to the owner of the missing CD, he reminded me of the discussion we'd had over it's disappearance. He said I still had it, I said I didn't. My adamant side of the disagreement was that Ell and I keep CD's in only two places and his CD was in neither of those places. By deduction, his CD had been returned. The careful organizational minds Ell and I both use ruled out a third spot because we would never be so careless as to not place things where they belong. Even though it did end up being somewhere else, we didn't know that somewhere else even existed.
I wonder how often we humans get stuck on things being one or two ways with the same number of explanations, when there is very likely another option we don't even know exists. Since we don't know it exists we refuse to accept or talk about anything beyond our staunch beliefs. How much do we miss -- or ignore -- because we won't open our minds to that additional option? Or even the idea that other options could exist? Just a thought.
After five minutes of seat sliding, glove box emptying, car mat overturning, and some grumbling, the card was still lost. Ell came out and together we repeated all of the above. No luck. The ashtray (coin cup in our car) hides under a sliding cover below the radio and heater controls. When she slid back the cover to see if the card was in the ashtray (it wasn't) she noticed a tiny gap where the lid slid into the console. The gap was no wider than a couple pieces of paper laying flat. There was no way a card could fit into the slot. All our other options were spent, so we got out a screwdriver and took off the side plastic panels to see if the tiny slot had eaten our card.
Imagine our surprise when we not only found our debit card, but two credit cards (we cancelled all our credit cards almost four years ago), eight business cards, parking permits from training I did in Cleveland and Youngstown three years ago, mini baseball cards from Cracker Jack boxes (we never eat Cracker Jacks), a couple honey-do lists, a magnet from the Main Street Theatre, and a CD that wasn't ours. That sliding lid had been stealing things for five years and neatly stacking them in a secret compartment directly behind itself right below the dashboard.
As I relayed the story that night to the owner of the missing CD, he reminded me of the discussion we'd had over it's disappearance. He said I still had it, I said I didn't. My adamant side of the disagreement was that Ell and I keep CD's in only two places and his CD was in neither of those places. By deduction, his CD had been returned. The careful organizational minds Ell and I both use ruled out a third spot because we would never be so careless as to not place things where they belong. Even though it did end up being somewhere else, we didn't know that somewhere else even existed.
I wonder how often we humans get stuck on things being one or two ways with the same number of explanations, when there is very likely another option we don't even know exists. Since we don't know it exists we refuse to accept or talk about anything beyond our staunch beliefs. How much do we miss -- or ignore -- because we won't open our minds to that additional option? Or even the idea that other options could exist? Just a thought.
posted by Sam at 10:02 AM
2 Comments:
Sam,
Great post. I honestly believe that we made our lives so linear, that when the abstract surfaces it surprises us.
I gotta run, I gotta check my car for the pearl jam cd's that I borrowed from that I can't find. :)
Paul
Huh! Who would've guessed?
A very thought-provoking post....
L
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