Never Move Anything If You Ever Want To See It Again

Where are the goddamn garbage bags?

I moved everything out of the basement stairwell for the guys who are parading through my home telling me that everything is broken and they don’t accept credit cards.

The garbage bags were hanging from a coat hook in a plastic bag (yes, the bags were in a bag, but it was a different kind of bag, which is like a witness protection program for bags).

I have this vague memory of thinking, “Well, the garbage bags should be closer to the trash can anyway. That just makes sense. So I’ll put them somewhere closer to the trash can.”

And then they disappeared from the face of the planet.

Maybe that’s what happened to Jimmy Hoffa. They had his body in one place for a while, and then they thought, “Well, we should move him someplace that makes more sense, like a cemetery,” and then they just forgot where they put him.

I could’ve sworn that I put the trash bags behind the trash can. They’re a smallish gray roll of bags. There’s not even that many left (well, now there’s zero left) so tucking them behind the trash can in the kitchen was completely doable and space-saving. Efficient. Brilliant.

And, in retrospect, a completely dumbass thing to do.

Garage bags have been hanging from that coat hook for approximately 16 years. That’s the garbage bag hook. That’s where I keep them. That’s their home.

Everything I move that I’ve kept in one particular spot for a long time because I suddenly think of a better spot, will immediately vanish into thin air.

This isn’t the absentmindedness that put the milk carton in the dish cabinet or the keys in the refrigerator. This is my brain actually trying to do a good deed. This is my brain trying to help me.

Please, brain, don’t help. I’ve opened every drawer in the kitchen. Nope. And I know the place is a mess, but I don’t have any dead cats under piles of newspapers like on Hoarders. I can mostly see what’s laying on the floor.

Now, I will admit that I also had to move the tote bag full of other plastic bags (I’m very bag-oriented) out of the stairwell and into the kitchen, so there are a buttload of plastic bags sort of spilling out all over the place. It looks like a Walmart check out line exploded.

But none of those plastic bags contain the garbage bags. I’m pretty sure. Let me go feel them up again.

Nope, no garbage bags.

Maybe I need a snack. A snack usually helps me think.

Now, the recycling is also in a plastic bag. Maybe I accidentally threw the garbage bags out with the recycling. That’s entirely possible. And very ironic.

But it’s more interesting to blame ghosts.

This is exactly the kind of thing an asshole ghost would do — hide the garbage bags until I buy more garbage bags, and then put the old garbage bags someplace super obvious, like behind the trash can.

Now, I didn’t actually pay for these particular trash bags. I more appropriated them, shall we say, from work. But still, right this minute I could really use a trash bag.

And if a small gray roll of garbage bags suddenly appears behind the trash can tomorrow, I’m moving.

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