Missing

I received a letter from the admissions department of the New York supreme court telling me my law school certificates are missing. How can they be 'missing'? Does that mean they lost the documents, or that they never received them, I wondered. So I phoned them and found that the department had never received them. Since the schools did send the certificates, the papers are indeed missing.

And I think about other things that have been displaced recently. Like my blue crystal hairband. I remember using it one day a couple of weeks ago but yesterday when I looked for it at its usual place, it wasn't there. Now if I placed it somewhere else, I should remember, but I don't. So where is it?

What happens to things that go missing? Do they get sucked into one big hole in the universe or do they get allocated their own separate space? I used to puzzle over why I always managed to end up with one sock that could not be matched to any other in the pile. Whatever happened to the other pair - if I had lost it, wouldn't I remember? It's not every day you would see a sock running down the street by itself.

LOST: a small chunk of memory
that recalls where missing items are.
IF FOUND, please return to owner.