Oh dear.

It's a distinct possibility that I might be going batshit insane.  Allow me to elucidate.  For years now, my brain has been hiding things from me.  Para ejemplo... if I'm looking for my lighter, or my phone, or a pen, or anything that is about the size of a pack of cigarettes (or when I'm looking for my cigarettes), every once in a while my brain will find it hilarious to just block these things from my vision while I'm looking for them.  On numerous occasions I've been looking directly at the thing I was looking for, and just DID. NOT. SEE. IT.

This started, I think, about 20 years ago, when I was looking for a library book I'd checked out from the local community college I was attending.  I scoured my room for that book, but finally I just gave up and paid for the damn thing.  About a week after that, I was going through my closet for whatever reason, and there was the book, sitting right on top of everything, in plain view.  That was the first time this kind of thing had happened that I remember, and for a long time nothing like it ever happened again.

Now though, for the past several years, this has been happening more and more frequently.  Like I said... lighters, keys, smokes, phone, jewelry, flash drives, anything that's sufficiently small... my brain will just ix-nay it from my vision.  Then, usually minutes or hours later, I'll discover it lying right out in the great wide open where I'd already looked.  Is this funny, brain?  Do you get a kick out of driving me to the brink of insanity?

The day before yesterday was the grandaddy of all practical jokes that my brain has decided to play on me up to this point... that is, unless my entire life and everything I've seen and heard and felt up to now has been just one big joke, and all of these little incidents are just jokes within the joke.  Now wouldn't that be funny?  I bet my brain thinks it would be... anywho.  The things I'm about to describe, I remember clearly, as if they really happened.  They are distinct memories, and I can refer to them.  I remember them happening, just like I remember, say... picking up my cigarettes, pulling one out of the pack, lighting it, taking a drag, and setting it in the ashtray about 45 seconds ago.  I remember them just like that. 

So, the day before yesterday, I distinctly remember picking up my phone charger and putting it in my left breast pocket, right above my smokes, before walking to work.  When I got to work, I clocked in and then went over to the register to wait for Steve to finish counting.  When he was done, I removed all of the items from my pockets... smokes, phone, charger, prayer book, and lighter... just like I always do, habitually, every day... and put them next to the register.  I checked a few customers, and then went into the cooler to order beer.

That took about an hour, and when I came back to my register, my charger was gone.  I looked high and low for that thing, because I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER putting it down next to the register, just as I DISTINCTLY REMEMBER putting it in my breast pocket before walking to work.  I asked Chiy and Lin and Brian and Matius and everybody if they'd seen it, and nobody had.  It was a frikin mystery.  My phone charger had spontaneously evaporated.

That night I came home and looked for it in the usual places... my computer desk, on the arcade cab, on the dresser, plugged into the wall... but I didn't find it.  I went to work yesterday and looked some more, and yup, you guessed it.  It still wasn't there.  Every now and then Chiy would ask me, 'You find your charger?  Why it not there if you put it there?  If you put it there, it should be there!'  Yeah, Chiy, I agree 100%.  You're absolutely right.  I've never heard more irrefutable logic.  It should definitely be there if I put it there, and I believed whole-heartedly that I had, in fact, put it there.  I finally gave up and resigned myself to getting used to life minus phone charger for a while, and decided to just order another one.  And although the odds are a godzillian to one, it is scientifically and statistically possible that my phone charger had simply undergone spontaneous existence failure.

So, here I am, sitting at my laptop, and just before I started writing this, about 15 minutes ago, I was checking to see if my Wacom was plugged in so I could photoshop this comic I'm working on, and FUCK ME if my phone charger wasn't RIGHT THERE.  Right where I'd looked yesterday!  Sitting there, in plain view, an inch from my mouse.  The same mouse I'd been using last night to cavort all over the internet. 

This is the first time my brain has invented a memory of me seeing something that wasn't there, as opposed to vice versa.  What's next?  Will I be in the cooler, ordering beer, and completely miss the six foot stack of Miller Lite 12 packs and order 20 more, thinking that we're out?  Or will I see a stack of Budweiser 18 packs that isn't there, decide that we have enough, and then stare like a drooling retard at the empty spot in the cooler when we run out two days later ?  Or will I finally just frolic off to La-La-Land with Julie when she comes to pick me up in the Mothership?

I think I might be going slightly mad.  Yes, I'm going slightly mad.  It finally happened, I'm slightly mad.  Oh dear! 

And there you have it.