As far as I know, I don’t know anyone who has joined the Witness Protection Program. I read an article that likened participation in the program to falling off the face of the Earth, noting that the most important rule is that participants must never make contact with anyone from their past. They just vanish.
I believe that there is a similar program for select household items. You know, things that you are sure that you bought and brought home, but that have vanished, never to be seen again by your family. Like these.
Mechanical Pencils
I am particularly fond of writing in pencil. Paper Mate mechanical pencils are my absolute favorite. They are expensive, so I stock up during back-to-school sales and on the rare occasion when they are BOGO at the grocery. I even have a super secret hiding place for my stash of Paper Mate pencils. But when I need one, they are usually all gone. They disappear. Quietly. Into the night.
School Socks
This is a photo of the school socks remaining at the end of this school year. In August I bought three ten-packs of school socks. That’s thirty pairs of socks for two girls. Even if we did laundry only once a week, we should still have twenty more pairs of socks than we need. But as you can see, we don’t. Sometimes they leave in pairs, sometimes alone. Somewhere there is a village of white school socks living quiet, unassuming lives.
Scotch Tape
Scotch tape enters the Household Item Witness Protection Program so quickly that it is impossible to capture evidence of its existence in our home. That empty space is where it would be – in a drawer in the kitchen. Although I usually buy Scotch tape in bulk, we rarely have a single roll. Its disappearance is silent and stealth.
Elastic Hair Ties
Elastic hair ties make up the largest part of the Household Item Witness Protection Program. They vaporize. I never buy less than two forty-packs at a time. And yet, there are times when we can’t find a single one. Elastic hair ties are sneaky. Sometimes we’ll see one in an odd place – in the laundry basket, on a shelf in the pantry, on the dining room table. My theory is that those are hair ties that were on their way to their new home when we caught them leaving. No doubt there is an secret island somewhere inhabited only by elastic hair ties.
