Lesson #2: Always carry a poncho

As anyone who has known me for a day will tell you, I am fairly prone to losing things.  How prone?  Let's just say that there's an entry in my annual budget spreadsheet for "Lost/Replacement Items."  Hell (without even planning this as a precursor to this blog post) I've lost my ID not once, but twice in the last week.  I've figured out that if the item is not directly strapped to me, there's basically a 50/50 shot that it won't end up on my person at the end of the day.

Usually, the forgotten article doesn't keep me up at night.  Now, don't get me wrong... I hate ending up with unpaired socks, but, at the end of the day, I'm not going to fret too much about my missing glove or sweatshirt or (believe it or not) eyeglasses.  After all, I've already lost three gloves this year and that's why you keep backup pairs of glasses!

"But what about the serious stuff, like your wallet or your cell phone?" you may ask.  Although the answer may surprise you, frankly, I hardly worry about that either.  I've lost my wallet god knows how many times, with credit cards, IDs, and even social security cards tucked inside.  And, don't get me started on how many times I've lost my cell phone (interestingly, for some reason, when I had the Pantech 3200, colloquially known as the "Zoolander phone, " I never lost it... curious).  Yet, (almost) always I am able to keep a cool head.  Why?  Because my lived experience tells me that these things have a way of finding their way back home.  Only once that I can remember have I misplaced my wallet and not been able to track it down later.  And that one time, it was actually just pick-pocketed from me, so it doesn't even count!  Which leads me to a funny story in which my mother pick-pocketed my wallet in order to teach me a lesson...  The lesson I learned was to never walk in front of my mother again.

Before I continue, I want to point out that while everything I've said so far may lead you to believe that I've never actually lost anything valuable, that conclusion couldn't be farther from the truth.  I have lost at least two (more likely three) iPods in the last five years, each time wiping away years of music collecting and innumerable OCD-induced hours of digital organization.  Worst of all, and you may need to sit down for this, I recently lost my partner's camera...... on the last day of a two-week long spring break in which we road-tripped down from Connecticut to New Orleans for Mardi Gras and went to San Francisco to wine taste and meet her family for the first time!  Oh goodness, all the gold lamé tops and cross-dressing that now remain undocumented!!!  I may never live down those memories that I've abandoned somewhere in a DSW in downtown San Francisco...

Those majestic blunders have taught me to keep better track of my valuable possessions, but the same lesson just doesn't apply to our daily accoutrements.  Picture, for instance, a bitter, stormy morning.  You strap on your rain boots, grab your umbrella, and gallantly endure the torrential rain on your way to class.  But, alas, it's not raining once you reach your classroom!  So you shake off your umbrella and place it on the floor by the door, so as not to drip tactlessly across the entire room.  Two hours later, you've learned a lot and you head outside pleased to find it's no longer raining.  Delighted, you prance around campus listening to Electric Light Orchestra in your head.  However, when you wake up to another rainy morning a week later and find no umbrella, you suddenly switch off the ELO and ramp up your mental Papa Roach (the early years) station.  What did you do wrong?

I'll tell you: you didn't carry a poncho!  I know ponchos aren't exactly the sexiest item in your wardrobe, but remember when I told you that something needs to be strapped to me in order for me to guarantee it's safe passage?  Well, ponchos are portable enough to be able to fit neatly into the second pouch of my bookbag upon folding.  This guarantees that no matter how many umbrellas I may misplace, I always have protection.