Why Ancient Peoples Believed in Spirits

Okay, I know this happens to everyone. I'll describe what happened on last Friday morning and everyone will say, "That happens to everyone." and it happens to me a lot, but this particular experience was more intense than usual. What happened was I lost my glasses and then I found them, but there's more and the reader is saying "There'd better be."

It was Friday morning, I had gotten up early, paid some bills on the computer, checked my email, put in a comment or two on A2K and then ate a little breakfast. My plan was to send out the laundry and then head downtown to the New York Historical Society to see the exhibit Slavery in New York. I just finished reading, well, listening to on my MP3, Jill LaPore's book New York Burning : Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan and I wanted to see what other insights the exhibit might reveal. I got all the clothes together, called for the pick-up, went into the bathroom to shave, picked out a shirt to wear, checked for a reply on A2K, got my shoes on and brought my jacket into the living room to be ready to make a quick getaway as soon as the laundry guy arrived. I have found in the past if I don't get out of the apartment immediately other things keep intervening until suddenly it's mid-afternoon and time for a nap.

Okay, so about 9:30 the guy comes, only it's one of the ladies from the shop, I help her put the huge bag into the shopping cart she has wisely brought and off she goes. Separate, no bleach, no Downy, it'll be ready by four in the afternoon. I put on my jacket, go get my keys, my phone and my Palm off of my desk and look for my glasses. No glasses. "That's odd." I thought, " I thought they were here." So, off I go to the bedroom. Are they on the bureau? Nope. Oh, that's right, they must be in the bathroom from when you shaved. Open the bathroom door and checkout the sinktop. No glasses. Huh. Go look in the kitchen. No. Go look in the bathroom again and check out the bed to see if I left them there when I put on my shirt. No. Maybe I never had them on today so they are still on the bedside table. No, they are not.

Now I am getting too hot with the jacket on so I take it off and put on the back on the loveseat. I go look on the desk again. Not there. I move some papers and pick up an empty soda can. I check A2K and see a reply, I sit down and type a short response. Okay, now time to find the glasses. I toss the empty can into the trash and I go back to the bedroom, they are still not on the bureau, still not on the bedside table. Wait a minute, I watched some TV weather early this morning so I must have had them on then. The Today show had this really cool girl singer on, KT Tunstall a kind of one girl band, she used an echo machine to make a backup signature and then used her guitarbody to make a drumnoise and stomped on a mic-ed tambourine on the floor with her left foot. Very appealing, folkie and poppy music with a nice edge. You could tell that she had done a lot of street singing. Maybe I left the glasses on the hassock. No. Maybe I left the glasses on the hassock and when one of the cats knocked some of the magazines down, the glasses fell with them. On hands and knees, look under the loveseats, look under the hassock. Pick up the magazines.

Now this is where it gets weird. Your mind begins to think very odd things. Maybe they got thrown into the laundry?. Maybe I should call the laundry and ask them to look. Maybe they are under the bed- no- maybe they fell behind the bedside table, no, because remember you had them on when you were watching tv. Are you sure they are not on the desk? Look again. Pick up and move everything around. Wait, don't move everything, you might cover them up by mistake. Think when was the last time you saw them? At the desk. Right. But they are not there so they have to be in the bedroom. Go there. Look under the bed again only this time use the CSI Technique of using a mini-flashlight to focus your attention. Look under spouse's side of the bed too. Carefully remove covers one by one off your side of the bed in case your dropped them when you put on the shirt. That was wrong before and it's wrong this time too.

Where the heck are they? Now just a little panic starts to set in, I can't really work or walk around without them. I could make do for a few days but distance viewing would give me a headache in no time. I've got to find them. Start over. Do you have them on? Duh, no. Okay.... Hassock, no, desk, no, under desk, no, in wastebasket, no, on file cabinet, no, by the microwave, no, by the toaster, no, IN THE REFRIGERATOR, no and you are being silly. Yeah, so where are they, smartass voice guy? They are here, I reassure the semi-panicked I, and I go back into the bathroom, are they in the tub? Are they down in that little space between the sink and the tub. No.

An hour has gone by and then an hour and a half. I have taken my shoes off. I have given up. They are not here. They are not with the laundry, they would have called when they found them as the sorted the stuff. They have disappeared. I lay on the bed and try to relax, they will show up I say, they have to, I really need them. I go into the living room and shut off the tv. I decide to check to see if there is a reply to my reply. I go to the desk.

And there they are. Right where I left them.
I was shocked. I was startled and put a little off kilter, I felt like someone had tricked me, my world actually spun, my head wooshed. There they were, right where I thought I had left them in the first place. Was I nuts?

Now, I know I looked right at the spot not once but several times and they were not there or they were hidden from my sight or the hoo-doos had them or something. Yet, here they are now. Innocent, without any way of telling me where they were all the time I was looking for them. Were they looking for me too? Do I owe some saint an offering? Should I hug a tree or pet a stone in the forest? Would the shamans have a better explanation than "You idiot, they were there all the time."

I put my shoes on. I got my jacket. I locked the door and walked to the subway all the time thinking that in LaPore's book there were mentions of spells and curses and chants.