As I grew up, this trait still has it's trail on my history. But it seems to me that it has evolved. I just don't lose stuff anymore. It is almost like I push them out of my life, aa, no scratch that.... I push them out of my reality, the dimensions that I inhabit, and make them one with a universe that I am not a part of. Ohkay, you probably realize that is an exaggeration, but live with me and you will sense my predicament. I am just not good at keeping stuff. May be I have the curse of the Midas touch. The bad kind. Now before you start your psycho-babble about "mr-looking-for-an-easy-way-out-by-labeling-self-a-loser-than-doing-anything-about-it", hear me out. Let me list the things that I have lost over the years, in recent memory:
1) Canon PowerShot A520 Camera: July 17th. 2005. A midnight cake with 24 candles blown, and yours truly blown away. An amazing, the-then-state-of-the-art-of-point-and-shoot-photography-camera was given to me as a Birthday gift, by some of my closest friends. I went to a fateful canoeing trip on that day, and as is my habit (for a second I thought habit spells like rabbit with an h. Whose spell am I in!) when am in the company of water, I couldn't stay dry for too long. As our boat capsized, my camera drowned in so much H2O, and mouth dried from my 'OHH!!!'....or more like a dramatic 'nnnnnnooooooooohhhhhhhhhh'.
2) My Sony Ericsson handset: Same day, Same story. Same canoe. Same water. Different electronics.
3) My Sony Ericsson handset: Same brand, Another instrument. Dont remember the day, but the phone slipped from my hand and fell through three floors of housing onto concrete ground. And I thought me and my phone shared a concrete relationship.
4) My friend's camera, Canon Powershot A510: Around July 25, 2005. Right within a week after losing my camera, I borrowed a friends (who was one of the ones that had gifted me the lost one) cos I wanted to snap myself with a friend who was visiting me. And guess what. Though we didn't go canoeing anywhere, the camera lost me in a library.
5) My first laptop: (Demise date: sometime in August 2006) I didn't exactly lose it, it just became unworkable. A Dell laptop that let me push its buttons (ohkaye, I will call it the keypad), got so charged up, that it refused to get charged by its adapter one fine day. The problem, was not in the charger, or the pin. It was in the motherboard that simply refused to accept the charge from the pin.
6) My second laptop: (Demise date: sometime in September 2008) A Dell 710m laptop (I should have known better, you'd say), but this was my favorite one. A small light laptop that was my light pal that worked fine for a couple of years. It still works fine, except for the small matter of its display. I think it was the inverter thats gone wrong (or whatever it is called ) but the display just wouldn't light up! That prompted me to buy my third!
7) My third laptop: Fortunately no demise date has been set, though there was a scare around March 2010.
8) and 9) These are unmentionables. These may not be even objects, they might as well have been people. I have not yet gotten over losing them, and it will be sometime before I get over that.
But I ask myself: Can I ever hold on to anything! or Anyone!!
You know how you are always looking over for some deep inner meaning behind everything that happens in your life? and opens up your mind!!! I keep wondering what lesson I must learn. Obviously, the biggest lesson is to NOT lose stuff. To be careful. To be self-aware. To be un-negligent. In Ross's (from Friends) terms, have "Unaagi" (or was it Salmon roll!!) But until then, may be I should stay away from electronics. Because of my jinx.
But underneath it all, may be there is a deeper lesson. May be All is not lost! May be Nothing in the world is lost or gained, but merely changes hands (the law of conversion of hands??)! Out of lost pencils and geometric boxes, I found friendship based on sharing. Out of wet cameras and cell phones, I learnt lessons about .... staying away from water as much as I can. Out of demised laptops I learnt not to trust Dell too much. Or any laptop older than 2 years, too much. And amongst them all I found friends and family who trust me inspite of all that I lost. May be thats what I was supposed to find. Everybody loses something sometime. Some more times than others. May be electronics will never find a safe haven in my life. And thats why I am happy that my friends are not charged. And their friendship will always be safe with me, because I don't own it. It owns me.
2) My Sony Ericsson handset: Same day, Same story. Same canoe. Same water. Different electronics.
3) My Sony Ericsson handset: Same brand, Another instrument. Dont remember the day, but the phone slipped from my hand and fell through three floors of housing onto concrete ground. And I thought me and my phone shared a concrete relationship.
4) My friend's camera, Canon Powershot A510: Around July 25, 2005. Right within a week after losing my camera, I borrowed a friends (who was one of the ones that had gifted me the lost one) cos I wanted to snap myself with a friend who was visiting me. And guess what. Though we didn't go canoeing anywhere, the camera lost me in a library.
5) My first laptop: (Demise date: sometime in August 2006) I didn't exactly lose it, it just became unworkable. A Dell laptop that let me push its buttons (ohkaye, I will call it the keypad), got so charged up, that it refused to get charged by its adapter one fine day. The problem, was not in the charger, or the pin. It was in the motherboard that simply refused to accept the charge from the pin.
6) My second laptop: (Demise date: sometime in September 2008) A Dell 710m laptop (I should have known better, you'd say), but this was my favorite one. A small light laptop that was my light pal that worked fine for a couple of years. It still works fine, except for the small matter of its display. I think it was the inverter thats gone wrong (or whatever it is called ) but the display just wouldn't light up! That prompted me to buy my third!
7) My third laptop: Fortunately no demise date has been set, though there was a scare around March 2010.
8) and 9) These are unmentionables. These may not be even objects, they might as well have been people. I have not yet gotten over losing them, and it will be sometime before I get over that.
But I ask myself: Can I ever hold on to anything! or Anyone!!
You know how you are always looking over for some deep inner meaning behind everything that happens in your life? and opens up your mind!!! I keep wondering what lesson I must learn. Obviously, the biggest lesson is to NOT lose stuff. To be careful. To be self-aware. To be un-negligent. In Ross's (from Friends) terms, have "Unaagi" (or was it Salmon roll!!) But until then, may be I should stay away from electronics. Because of my jinx.
But underneath it all, may be there is a deeper lesson. May be All is not lost! May be Nothing in the world is lost or gained, but merely changes hands (the law of conversion of hands??)! Out of lost pencils and geometric boxes, I found friendship based on sharing. Out of wet cameras and cell phones, I learnt lessons about .... staying away from water as much as I can. Out of demised laptops I learnt not to trust Dell too much. Or any laptop older than 2 years, too much. And amongst them all I found friends and family who trust me inspite of all that I lost. May be thats what I was supposed to find. Everybody loses something sometime. Some more times than others. May be electronics will never find a safe haven in my life. And thats why I am happy that my friends are not charged. And their friendship will always be safe with me, because I don't own it. It owns me.
