not same as it ever was

(originally posted 08/19/2012)

So I saw this ad for a men’s cologne yesterday. This good-looking albeit slightly effeminate fellow is extolling the virtues of getting lost. I guess the point of this commercial was to associate the carefree attitude of a hunky young man with the fragrance contained within their cute little bottle, leading the consumer to believe that if they go out and purchase this cologne they will become not only more hunky with its application but also considerable more carefree.

I’m sorry but all I got out of the ad was that this product captures the scent of being lost. And by lost I mean leaning against a car while sitting in an area that can only be the salt flats of Death Valley… which brings up the question “can you actually be lost if you know where you are?” I mean, you might not be where you want to be but you’re not exactly lost are you? He seemed very comfortable and in no great rush to get un-lost. Now if his car was out of gas sitting in the middle of Death Valley I think he’d be experiencing a much different scent and one I think the manufacturer would be a great deal more hesitant to market.

Now this whole conversation to this juncture has been a digression from the actual point of the story, but as I started with what originally got me to thinking of the point of the story and not what the point of the story actually was you are excused for not having notice.

You can’t really believe that I would dedicate an entire story to a cologne commercial can you? Well, it is true that I have dedicated many more words to even less significant topics you can proceed reading with the utmost confidence that this is not one of those cases and what follows, while perhaps not profound, is at least more palatable than mulling over a pretty boy and what he smells like after sitting in a desert.

The idea of not actually being lost if you know where you are, despite it not being where you wanted to end up, got me pondering other issues related to being lost. How, you ask, can you tell the difference between when I’m merely thinking and when I’m pondering? I believe that when I’m pondering I weigh more. I certainly feel heavier and there can be no doubt that the word pondering sounds heavier than thinking, even taking into account that it is one letter longer I think you’ll agree that it sounds even heavier than  just one letter longer.

Now obviously I not only digressed from the upcoming topic but this time you were aware of it and my guess is you didn’t appreciate it given your piqued curiosity about what the actually point of the story is.

I will delay no further. Obviously the holidays are a busy time and I would hate to think that I held you up any longer than absolutely necessary after you were nice enough to take a few moments and read my story in the first place. Of course, if you are a regular reader of said stories than it serves you right for having stopped and read it in the first place given my track record of wasting both time and effort. I guess then I am only feeling the guilt of holding up a freshly-scrubbed new reader who stumbled upon my stories by accident and had no idea about what they were getting themselves into.

So for them, here it is… the point! In fact I will jump right into it and let the savvy reader figure out how I got from the last discussion of ‘lost’ to this new take on the matter without any further delay.

I did an experiment today.

Ever hear the expression about looking for something that is lost… how it’s always in the last place you look? Sure you have, everybody has not only heard that expression but lived it out numerous times. Misplacing things is such a common occurrence that somehow the science behind that expression has never really been tested. We’re unable to find something. We search everywhere. We finally find it. And, so the theory goes, it’s always in the last place we look.

Why? Because after we find it we don’t keep looking do we? Simple. Even a child can understand that.

Or can they?

Today I did a ground breaking experiment.

I couldn’t find my keys. After tearing the house apart I finally found them.

Then I kept looking.

That’s right. I found them and then continued looking anyway. To start with I was the first person to ever find something not in the last place they looked. That’s pretty awesome.

I could tell you that in fact a little while later I found them again, this time in my pocket, or I found another set of keys I’d lost years earlier but that wouldn’t be true. Then again, how many true things are as interesting as what’s not true?

Is it true that David Byrne, of the band Talking Heads, was talking about brine pools (areas on the ocean basin that have very high salinity due to the motion of large salt deposits caused by salt tectonics and give the appearance of lakes under the ocean) when he sang “There is water at the bottom of the ocean?”

I think I’ve just scratched the surface of this investigation. One day people might shrugs their shoulders and say “things are usually the last place you look for them”… all because of me.