To see or not to see

"You are frantically searching for something. You thought you knew where you kept it (usual spot). But you have not only looked there but also scoured the entire house/vicinity. However the said object seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth. And then finally you give up and decide its gone forever, cursing the object, yourself and the world (not necessarily in that order). Before settling into life without the object you decide to look for it one last time in the place where it should have been ideally. And lo behold there it is in its usual spot staring back at you innocently, driving you to wonder if you are going blind or a little nuts". Sound familiar? ...I am sure this scenario has played in most of our lives at least once. For me this is a part of my everyday.

With me the first part usually plays as I described above. The second part plays as follows...When I do find the object my first thought is.. OK my thought varies per the situation.. If I am alone then the thought is " I wonder if this is work of some evil naughty elves whose only job is to frustrate me by hiding things from me and then bewilder me by placing them in the original spot before I look for the last time"( imaginative me).. If R is home " I wonder if he did it to spite me" (evil me).. In either case my conclusion is the same " Its me..Its me...Its all me..Nobody did anything" (sane me).

In all these years I have not been entirely able to point at the exact reason behind repetition of these fiascoes..as in if it is that I don't look properly in the first place or that my eyes do see it but my brain doesn't register it. The brain registering option is very valid because I have been known to actually "not see" people ( I sooo wish I was exaggerating here). It sounds implausible that my eyes wouldn't see a whole human being, that's where the brain registering option comes in.

During my childhood, my mom's constant response to my accident proneness was " Unakku kalula kannu veikkanum" which translates to " You need a pair of eyes on your legs". Today for the nth time I found some spice on the first shelf, after precariously getting up on my kitchen counter and performing acrobatics to look for it in the top shelves (Yes, I did look for it on the first shelf initially). And I thought to myself " Mom, if the eyes on my legs were to be anything like the pair on my head its a lost cause".