Yesterday we started with a premise:

Over one thousand dollars in cash is missing.

(it might even be a couple thouand dollars depending on what you sold)

Let’s begin there again: Imagine this. You just sold something substantial. You were paid cash. Instead of doing the reasonable thing and putting the money in a bank account, fearing ‘the government’ coming for it(?) you decided to keep it with you figuring you’ll slowly introduce these lovely little bills to the world in a trickle.

Over time, the money will dispurse and no one will be none the wiser. Oh sure, you know you’ve done nothing wrong or illegal. And having a stack of cash that’s almost two inches thick is the kind of thing that changes a person’s somatic experience of themselves.

A pile of money has value and can’t be traced. The thought of losing this much cash or having it stolen is unthinkable. You have big plans for these little critters. You don’t want to let them leave the house a moment earlier than necessary.

And?

There are others who both the desire for and need of your precious stack of cash.

If anyone knew, they might be prompted to break into your home and steal it. This is not a flight of fancy nor paranoia based on a bleak view of humaity. One morning on the downtown Toronto street where my wife grew up, we discovered that every single car on a section of street had a window broken. They were forced into by addicts.

The officer we spoke to told us that when people are desperate for drugs, they’ll break a window for a quarter. If they do that a hundred times, they will get their needs met.

As someone who writes daily, I have some small admiration for this approach. And, it’s this addicts persistance that makes me nervous about leaving a large sum of cash in the house when I go away for the weekend.

Have you ever been robbed?

It’s not a super fun physical experience. When it happens in person, it’s quite awful. When it happens anonmously, I’ve felt even dirtier afterwards.

So.

With all of this, I put my substantial sum of cash in a very safe place. I put it in such a safe place that when I went to find it to pay some bills, it would not be found. I searched the typical places:

• The top drawer of our shared dresser

• The third drawer of our shared dresser

• My nightstand

• In, around and under the head of the bed

• My shoes

• The freezer

• Under the zuchini

• Inside the dust jacket of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed1

After twenty minutes I started gettting frustrated. I removed the top drawer of my dresser. I took everything out. I did the same for my nightstand. No big pile of cash.

I did dodge on here though. Insead of searching every single book in my search I left that one alone. This was likely a good thing. If I did that this would be a blog post about ‘how to rid yourself of your book, Surfer’s Journal, record and DVD collections.

Instead, I went to my workroom and began going through the usual spots. Screwdriver rack? Nope. Abrasives drawer? Not this time. Top secret weed box? Not there either.

After thirty minutes of searching the workroom I gave up. By now, I’m fifty minutes into my search for my impressively large wad of bills. I’m feeling a combination of annoyed, self hating, frantic and hopeless all at once.

Where did the money go?

What safe place did I put it in, never to be seen again.

In order to answ

It was time to face the beast. It was time to ‘Enter the Closet’.

My closet is a bit of a ‘pass through’ concoction - like a galley kitchen except with more underpants. My part of it consists of three doors, some hanging bits, a couple of shelves and four drawers.

The drawers of the closet were stuffed to the point of suffocation with endless hiding spots. Did I leave it in a jacket pocket? Pants pockets? Stuffed in a pair of socks? Maybe I left it tied up in a pile underpants. That would be a good hiding place.

Right?

That would scare anyone away. No sane person ties knots in their knickers on purpose. Finding naughty underpants would be warning enough for me. And? I’ve never burgled before so I may not be an expert on such matters. With that in mind, I started with the jackets, pants and shoes, carefully inspecting the insides of all of them.

As I conducted my search for the hidden pile of cash, I found several clothing items that had not been touched in the seven years they lived in the closet. What’s worse, they created unnecessary hiding places that were interfearing with my search. These neglected garmets were uncerimoniously placed in a blue recycling bag.

Although I felt some relief watching the space open up to place things, I was still highly agitated. No cash yet.

This took another half an hour. Frustrated, I took another spin through the house. I opened drawers, poked around shelves and removed all the cusions from all of the furnature. I likely hissed at the dogs, barked at the cats and growled at the rest of the family in the process.

Still nothing.

Two hours in the delusions started.

It’s at the cottage. I didn’t leave it behind. I didn’t find a safe space at all. I left this cash at the cottage.

This seemed like a good idea at the time. This seemed like a clear and rational thought process - the first in a while after a nice spiral of ‘where did it’ go panick. So, I got in the car, and put on an audiobook for the forty five minute drive to the cottage.

I was greeted there my more messy drawers, more fruitless searching and more disappontment.

I am desperate to recount a tale of triumph emerging from such futility but I cannot. That was another two hours wasted. I had to return to the closet.

Letting go is difficult. For some this process is more difficult than others. I have an unnatural attachment to socks. Things that close to my sole never leave me. It has been years since I parted ways with any of my socks. Each one a potential ‘safe place’ for a lumply lump of lucre.

One hundred and twenty seven.

One hundred and twenty seven?

Yeah. That’s how many socks that were living in my sock drawer. Some had been there so long that there were three generations of that brand. Most were in pairs. A few odd widowed or orphaned socks had hooked up to create some cross manufactured pairings. It was a progressive sock drawer where this kind of activity was actively promoted.

There were pairs old, threadbare and ready for sock hospice. Others were middle aged workhorses that though in regular rotation were slipping a little. They were losing favour to the new, fresh, young, up and coming foot wraps.

When the dust settled only twenty pairs remain. Fourty socks in all survived. Ten pairs of woolies. Ten pairs of thin ones for warmer weather. I won’t tell you what happened exactly. I can say that this matter has yet to be investigated by the International Criminal Court. There are rumours that I may get charged with foot covering genocide. If you see them, it wasn’t me.

I worked methodically emptying every inch of my closet. I vacuumed it all too in a hope that I might find the bills under the dust.

Something switched for me. At some point, this activity became about cleaning out the closet. I forgot about the cash. How did this happend?

I kept emptying stuff until I was waist deep in the detritus of my life. Then I looked at the clock. I had been working at this for several hours and it was time for bed.

Slowly and methodically, I arranged everything. My now reduced sock commonwealth, huddled up against each other next to the sleeping shirts and the knotty underpants shaken, yet happy to remain.

Several large plastic bags filled with cotton, polyester and wool waiting for their mew homes where ever they may be.

And me?

Satisfied with a cleaned out closet.

One question remained?

Where did the money get to ?

If you recall, I checked: The typical places:

• The top drawer of our shared dresser

• The third drawer of our shared dresser

• My nightstand

• In, around and under the head of the bed

• My shoes

• The freezer

• Under the zuchini

• Inside the dust jacket of Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed

Please note: I did not check in the second drawer of the dresser. This is my wife’s drawer. I would never look in my wife’s drawer for anything. It’s not my place. In fact, that’s the last place I would look for a large wad of cash.

And that’s the last place I did look. There it was sitting as plain as day in my wife’s sweater drawer. It makes sense though. What would be interesting about my wife’s sweaters to a burgler?