Lost and Frowned

I have lost my MP-3 player.

I can’t tell you how sad I am about this—especially since I think I actually left it down in the exercise room of our building. How could I do this?—you may ask. Well, I’ve asked myself that question about a thousand times already, and I can’t conceivably figure out how I could have done that. But I haven’t been able to find it in our apartment after extensive searching—so I have to figure that I must have left it down there. (Yep, of course I checked down there, too—it wasn’t there.)

When I first lost it, I thought it was probably just deep in the bowels of our recliner—which is where it ended up the last time I lost it—but not this time. I have dug into the bowels of both our recliner and our couch, but no dice—well, actually, there were some dice, but no MP-3 player. I found other unsavory items, as well—but I guess that’ll happen when you go bowel-digging.

Then I checked with our doorman, Danny—who’s this sweet 80-year-old man—to see if anyone had dropped it off down there. When I told him what I had lost, he said, “A what? Could you please spell that?” When I said slowly “MP-3 player,” he said, “OK, an M-T-3 player. You’ll have to forgive me, I don’t know what that is.” “Um, it’s like a radio with headphones,” I said. For a second I thought I was talking to John McCain. But Danny hadn’t seen it, either.

So then I really started searching—into every nook and cranny of our house. Our cat, Autumn, followed me around as I dug into the farthest recesses of our home—like underneath my dresser—and dug out lots of little fuzzy toy mice—but no MP-3 player. She was delighted as I pulled every little toy mouse out from under the dresser and the couch and threw it at her.

Finally, exhausted from all my searching and sneezing like a maniac from all the dust I had kicked up, I gave up and sat back, watching Autumn play. She was really having fun with those mice—tossing them up in the air and then rolling around with them, biting and clawing at her “prey.” As I sat there and watched her, I thought about the fact that Autumn had no idea that those mice had gone missing months ago, and obviously she didn’t care, either.

And I realized that that is probably one way that cats are superior to humans—they have no attachment to material things. Even if you waved a hundred-dollar bill in front of their faces, they would probably just eat it.

So I decided to test that concept. I gave Autumn a dollar bill (being fresh out of $100 bills) just to see what she would do with it.



See? She started eating it and playing with it. She had no idea—nor did she care—what it was. To her, everything is either a toy or food—and nothing else. And she couldn’t care less when, two minutes later, I took the dollar bill away from her. She just went in the corner and took a nap.

And I decided right then and there—I want to be more like that. I don’t want to be so attached to material items that I feel extremely sad when one of them comes up missing. Yes, I will miss my MP-3 player—but it is entirely replaceable. It’s not like I lost SOMEONE—just some thing.

And happily, after spending just the right (irritating) amount of time lecturing me about being more careful with my things in the future, Iwanski has agreed that we can purchase a new MP-3 player for me very soon.

I know I probably don’t deserve it—after being so careless with this one—but I will certainly be happy to have my music back.

Because that’s really the only part that I’m sad about—that I can’t take my music around with me. But until I purchase a new one, I will just try to enjoy the city sounds as I walk to and from work—and I’ll swallow my medicine and learn my lesson so that I’ll always have my music with me in the future.