Well, there’s no denying, I’ve finally lost it.
Okay, stop laughing. The thing I’ve lost is my hairbrush. (Some of you are still laughing.) Yes, there’s still a little hair on top of my head, and yes, on occasion, it needs to be brushed.
But not now. My search over the last two weeks has turned up one fact; the only hairbrush I’ve owned for the last ten years is hopelessly lost.
I’ll just say it right up front. I lose things. I lose things all the time, but that’s not a recent development. I’ve been losing things since those seven years spent growing up on that old familiar street not so far away called Flamingo. And that’s where we have to return for the sage advice needed to find my hairbrush.
Soon after I started the third grade, Mom notice that I liked drawing. Being an artist herself, she understood the tools needed to foster a love of the arts. I also remember Dad being very supportive of Mom buying me a drawing pad and a set of pencils, “I’m all for anything that keeps him from drawing on the walls.”
Jumbo the elephant
Of the set of four pencils, all were graphite except one — it was charcoal. From fine light lines to dark bold ones, a charcoal pencil is simply the best for drawing, but it’s very hard to erase.
Charcoal is also almost impossible to get off a nice big white canvas … like a bedroom wall. Not that I’m admitting to drawing the mural Dad found that had “magically” appeared overnight. He painted our wall three times, and the mural still bled through.
But I digress; this story isn’t about my masterpiece called Jumbo the elephant. It’s about losing my favorite pencil — a #6 charcoal.
After searching for a week, Dad gave me what he thought was helpful advice, “Just look in the last place you remember having it and that’s where it is.” My answer to him was fast and to the point … and resulted in a whole lot of work.
“If I knew the last place I had it, I would search there first.”
Dad looked at me with a roller full of paint in one hand and a paint brush in the other. “I’d look wherever you left it after you finished drawing that elephant on the wall.” He handed me the brush. “Here, let’s put your ‘artistic’ talents to good use.”
Mom’s sage advice
Mom’s advice about finding lost items was easier to do, but harder to understand. “When you’ve searched in all the places that it can possibly be, just stop looking. It will eventually show up.”
Lost forever
After another week, the search for my beloved #6 charcoal pencil came to an end, but not because I’d found it. Dad finally admitted he’d broken it in half and threw it out right after he found Jumbo on the wall. His reasoning, “Pencil is a whole lot easier to cover up with a coat of paint than charcoal.”
My new #6 charcoal pencil
Spurring this childhood memory has been two things, the recent purchase of a new set of charcoal pencils (which I simply love) and, of course, the loss of my one and only hairbrush. When asked, The Wife said no to me drawing a mural on our wall, so I also purchased a new drawing pad instead.
But the search for the lost hairbrush continued
Following Dad’s advice, I tried remembering the last place I had my brush and looked … it wasn’t there. Following Mom’s advice, I stopped looking. Unfortunately, after waiting for another week, the hairbrush didn’t show up. And yes, I asked The Wife if she’d thrown it away. She said no.
I ordered a new one
To celebrate finally having a new brush after ten years, we decided to go out to dinner. The Wife and I don’t go out much, so changing into nice clothes was in order. After getting dressed, the last thing to do was pull on my shoes, and that’s when I found my hairbrush that had been lost for over three weeks.
Yes, Dear Reader, my hairbrush was in my dress shoes, and I remember exactly why it was placed there.
But that’s a story for another time.
[Rick Ryckeley has been writing stories weekly in The Citizen since 2001.]
