Lost in Space

Actual items LBL has lost, which are now orbiting the earth

According to Newsweek, NASA scientists want to build a cheap, earthbound laser that could zap away the “space junk” orbiting the earth.  The zapper wouldn’t make the items disappear.  Rather it would simply push the debris further out into space, so that incoming spacecraft wouldn’t crash into anything.  This is much the same way Life in the Boomer Lane prepares her home for social events.

While LBL understands the need for tidiness in space just as much as the next person (You certainly wouldn’t want to have a Space Party with a lot of stuff flying around, smacking people on the head), she’s a bit concerned that certain items of personal interest might be floating out there, along with all the space debris.  These would be primarily all of her lost items that somehow found their way out into space.

LBL had already read another article in Newsweek, telling her that “a group of scientists expects to be able to make objects disappear into thin air within the century.”  They do this with the use of “invisibility goggles.”  LBL could have saved these guys a lot of money and taught them how to make things disappear for real.

If something can be created, LBL can lose it.  In fact, LBL can lose it so efficiently that sometimes, when she writes down something like an important phone number for example, she already imagines it lost.  LBL placed a pair of earrings on the top of a dresser once.  They were the only items on the dresser.  The next morning, one of the earrings was gone.  LBL sat at the dining room table one day, and she felt an earring slip out of her ear.  It vaporized.  If there is a poltergeist following her around, it is clearly one who has only one ear.

The list goes on and on: earrings, rings, bracelets, cell phones, wallets, keys, clothing, books, a Daytimer, several months of her life (from losing the Daytimer),  really important tax documentation, large checks (small ones never get lost,) photos, credit cards, store receipts, a car (it was found), computer data, her virginity (OK, she’ll let that one go), glasses, contact lenses, her oldest child (he came back), a marriage (It didn’t), several body parts, weight (It came back), collagen (It didn’t), her eyebrows and pubic hair, money, the ability to remember a joke, the thread of numerous conversations, things flying off the roof of her car (including a cat.)

Nothing was ever found (except the car and the kid and the weight and the cat).  That rule of science “Matter can neither be created nor destroyed” means that these still-missing items have to be somewhere, right?  So LBL says there’s a pretty good chance the lost items are orbiting the earth, along with old satellites, rocket stages, and freeze-dried food packaging that were most likely tossed out the window.  LBL just wants a chance to see if anything out there belongs to her, before they zap everything and make it even more difficult for her to find.

Although it would be swell to find all of her lost items, the Daytimer would have to be Number 1 on the list.  When LBL lost that, she lost everything she was supposed to do for the rest of the year.  She’s always wondered what March-December 1999 would have been like, had she been able to actually experience it.  She bets it would have been great.  She needs to get those months back from space.