Missing in action

humour

What are you looking for?” my husband asked without looking up from the morning newspaper. “Why are you asking?” I enquired, trying to sound cool, calm and collected.

“I have been married to you for so long, and can understand your body language when you are hunting high and low for something. Your opening of drawers and almirahs, your frequent visits back and forth from our room are all telltale signs that something is missing,” he responded.

“My spectacles. Have you seen them?” I confessed unwillingly.
“Look inside the fridge,” he suggested on a serious note.

“How absurd can you get? Why on earth would I put them in the fridge?” I said.
“What’s so unusual? Didn’t you find your keys in the bread box a few days ago. Darling, let’s face facts. Even an elephant can get lost in our house, let alone a few knick-knacks,” he joked.

A few days later, when life was back to normal and everything was hunky-dory, my perfectionist husband gave me a mile-long sermon on the benefits of being systematic, organised and disciplined, and all this with a superior and smug look on his face. “What’s the big deal? Things do get lost in every home; so we just go ahead and find them,” I retorted, trying to brush off the incident. “Have you forgotten the episode that occurred just the other day with your sister and her dentures?” I continued.

His sister, feeling uncomfortable with her new set of dentures, had placed them in her lap while travelling in the car, but had forgotten about them when getting down. All of us had to use a torch to look for them in the dark. Fortunately, they had survived the ordeal.

My story fell on deaf ears as he brushed aside my justification and said, “For god’s sake, have a heart, the poor lady is 90 years old. You are not.”

Every dog has its day, I thought to myself. I did not have to wait long to get my own back. One evening, I saw my husband frantically involved in a search operation. I gleefully watched him turn the bedroom upside down. “Don’t be in a hurry to lay the dinner. Something very important has come up,” he told me brusquely. I understood it was a serious matter, as he is such a stickler for meal timings. For a change, I was on the other side of the fence.

“Can I help in any way?” I enquired. “Have you seen my yellow file?” he asked me.
“Think, think hard. Try to remember when you saw it last. Hope you did not leave it in the microwave while heating your tea,” I said, trying to make the most of this opportunity.

“Don’t talk nonsense. I remember keeping it carefully in my table drawer,” he replied impatiently.

“It could not have walked out without a chaperone,” I added, now fully in command of the situation. Finally, after much ado, the elusive file was retrieved from the back of the drawer where it had slipped and got stuck.

Such incidents do happen in a normal household,” said my husband, breathing a sigh of relief.

“Yes, sure they do,” I said, nodding my head in approval, jubilant in my heart of hearts, quite sure that I had bought peace, at least for the next few months.