CULTURE
The Man Who Loses Everything
Memory is a fickle friend. Once an ally, at some point in your life it turns
its back upon you and becomes an adversary.
First you forget names, then faces, then you forget to zip your pants up. And then, horrors, you forget to zip them down.
You get the picture.
Little things have alerted me to the fact that
my memory isn’t what it was.
One is the fact that every time I leave the house I return at least three
times to look for things I forgot: my phone, the right set of keys, my glasses,
my walkman, my cassettes, my “ToDo” list?
It’s become a joke. “What did you lose now?” my wife asks.
“Nothing,” I say curtly, not seeking a conversation.
“You lose everything. Are you getting Alzheimer’s?”
“No,” I snap. “I don’t lose things. I just misplace them. And by the way,” I add, slowly, savoring the word which I know will annoy her, “Your problem is that you have no idea what it is to ‘multi-task.’ You don’t have a clue how complicated my life is, all the things I do.”
“Hah!” she says, and I quickly decamp, hoping I don’t have to return.
I remember when my young son came running into his Great Grandmother’s kitchen in Springfield, Illinois some years back and asked about her neighbor who only had a thumb and two fingers on his right hand, “You know that man next door who lost his fingers?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Well he lost his cat!”
It is a fact, some people just can’t keep track of things.
I do feel bad about it sometimes.
A few weeks ago, a neighbor of mine up in Wisconsin told me he’d found a Sony Walkman with a cassette tape of Fahrenheit 451 lying on the ground near the gate to some property we own up in the North Woods.
I’d spent days looking for that player and tape before resigning myself to its loss, confessing my irresponsibility to the clerks at the Sulzer Regional Library, and paying the $10 fine.
Before that, a few months earlier, I’d gone to visit our land, which is on the Lac du Flambeau Chippewa reservation in Vilas County, Wisconsin, only to discover that persons unknown had blown my gate apart with a shotgun, stole my picnic table, and left a bunch of junk, including a microwave and 150 pounds of cable wire, lying in our piece of the woods.
I called the police and reported the incident to Officer Crystal Gillich, whom I met again a few weeks later when I stopped by the Tribal Police Department to drop off the key to a gate we built on the road to our land.
We talked, and then she mentioned in an off-handed way, “Hey, you know that microwave we found on the land? I found a camera under it.”
“A camera!” I said. “Maybe the guys who destroyed my gate took pictures of themselves posing with their guns and they’re on there.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she said. “These criminals aren’t too smart. Here,” she said, walking back to a desk, “ it’s one of these disposable cameras.”
“Did you develop the pictures?”
“No, I’ve been meaning to but I just didn’t get to it.”
“Would you mind if I did it?” I asked, and she gladly gave me the camera and said, “Let me know if you find anything.”
Filled with anticipation, I called my wife and said, “Guess what? The police found a camera on our land, under the microwave, and it might have the pictures of our uninvited guests. She said they’re really stupid sometimes and might do something like that.”
We both became excited while waiting for the film to be developed, convinced we were going to see pictures of stupid people.
When I got the film back I was stunned. The pictures were of a friend of mine in Scotland, and of a party in our back yard in Chicago.
The camera must have been left at our house after the party and I must have grabbed it as I ran out to drive up to the woods, and then promptly lost it on the land.
I mention all this by way of preface to the real story I want to tell you.
It’s about a man I met playing golf in Chicago who unconsciously helped me put all this into perspective. I only met him once, but he did me a great service.
He made me realize that it could always be worse.
So here is the story of THE MAN WHO LOSES EVERYTHING.
Late this summer I was on the 7th Hole at Edgebrook, a Forest Preserve District course on Chicago’s Northwest side, having a rather unpleasant round because I was playing as a single behind three extremely slow old men, when a small and agitated Korean man came running up to me and excitedly asked, “Dzhufndawej?”
“What?” I asked.
““Dzhufndawej? “Dzhufndawej?”
“Did I find a wedge?” I asked.
“Yuh!”
“Did you lose a club?”
“Yuh!”
I told him I hadn’t found a club and he turned on his heel and raced off.
I waited for the threesome ahead of me to clear the fairway, and teed off on the 8th hole. About 100 yards down, a golf ball emerged from nowhere and whizzed right past my head.
I turned around and saw the Korean running down the fairway to join me. “I play wi’ yu,” he said.
I welcomed another player as it would slow me down and make the threesome in front of us less frustrating. He said his name was Kim.
As we walked to the 9th tee, I noticed he had his phone clipped to and hanging out from the back pocket of his pants.
“Aren’t you afraid you’re going to lose your phone?” I asked.
“I already lose phone,” he said. “Diz my second phone. I dunno know where I lose it.”
I nodded in sympathy.
“And last week, I lost my wallet,” he went on. That bad one. I sink I lose it at Burger King.”
“Did you get it back?” I asked.
“No … Lose my green card, my gold card, my driver’s license, my social security. It bad!”
When we get to the 10th tee the threesome in front of us are just leaving. After a couple of minutes of fidgeting, Kim jumped up and said, “These guys too slow. I play ahead,” and with that he hoisted his clubs and he ran off down a hill, planning to tee off at the next hole before the threesome arrived.
I played the 10th hole alone and when I got to the 11th, there were four people ahead of me on the fairway, Kim having now joined the threesome.
“Oh, Great!” I muttered, and continued to plod along the course at an even slower pace.
When I reached the 17th tee, Kim came running up to me.
“Dzhufndsngls?
“What?”
“You find glasses? Snglass?”
“Did you lose your sunglasses?’
“Yuh,” he said.
‘No … I didn’t see them.”
He spun around on his heel without saying a word and ran off.
I stood there a moment and then yelled out, “Yo!”
Kim stopped and looked back at me.
“Come here,” I motioned.
Kim ran back.
“You know,” I said, choosing my words carefully. “You lose your club. You lost your phone. You lost your wallet. And now you lost your sunglasses. And you’re always in a hurry. Did you ever stop to think that maybe there’s a connection between all these things?”
He looked at me for a moment with blank eyes, and then snapped, “I don’t got time for this,” and turned and ran up the fairway to join his new friends.
I’ve never seen him again since that day.
All I can figure is, he must be lost.
