“Where’s my hat?” asked Waldo.
(Installment #2 for Heteronormative Week)
While your kids are looking for Waldo, Waldo doesn’t seem to know how to look.
Men can’t seem to find anything.
They will holler (from another room, from another floor, and sometimes, by phone, from another state):
“Where is:
– the mail?”
– the peanut butter?”
– my watch?”
– the cat?”
And the answers are (in no particular order): the pantry, your underwear drawer, under the newspaper, in the bathtub.
Waldo can be looking right at something, and not see it. My husband (not Waldo) called me at work to ask me to stop on the way home and buy sugar. He had the urge to bake …(that happens once every fifteen years, but the urge is urgent), and there was no sugar. I told him the pantry, the third shelf, the right side, in the front, blue bag. Nope, no sugar. When I got home I walked into the pantry – the third shelf, the right side, in the front, and took out the big blue bag that was deceptively labeled, “SUGAR.”
And Waldo can never admit that he might have misplaced something. Whatever is missing must be because I – (oops, I mean Waldo’s wife) – must have hidden it.
“Where did you hide my car keys?”
Or perhaps, even, Waldo’s evil wife could have thrown them away.
Yes, sometimes very sinister things happen.
Last week my husband wanted to replace the brush-heads on our electric toothbrushes. He was absolutely sure he had one more package of replacement heads. But he tore the bathroom apart and could not find the package.
Something despicable had happened.
“The cleaning lady took them.”
In our house, we have electronic equipment, fine jewelry, sterling silver service for twelve, and cold hard cash.
But those toothbrush heads were just too tempting.
notquiteold 
In my house, my husband is useless at FINDING anything. He will pick something up and move it because of some deep need to rearrange my world, and then he forgets what he has done with it. If I ask him where something is, he’ll tell me to look in the most obvious place, as if I am not smart enough to look there before calling him.
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This is so patently not true/ I would be offended by this post if it wasn’t such a balded-headed lie that simply perpetuates a myth/ I have no problem in this regard/just ask my beautiful soon-to-be wife/ She’s around here somewhere/ (excuse the punctuation but I can’t find the dang exclamation point/)
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Hang on, sweetheart, and I’ll find that exclamation point for you.
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Omg! I am married to Waldo! Keys, screwdrivers, hammers, his shoes and even the lawnmower! He says it should make me feel valued!
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LOL….love it. I have to agree 100%. Unless it jumps right out at him, my “waldo” is the same. But in my household, I admit since he is a bit of a pack rat, I often throw things out that he hasn’t used in the last 20 years. Then on the 21st year when he IS looking for it, I blame the maid. She must have cleared it out. LOL
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Yes, this is also true in our household, though we’ve been in training for quite some time and have made progress. I stopped being the go-to and find-it girl. That’s the answer really, isn’t it–we ourselves perpetuate the lost-and-found activity by getting involved. It’s quite a relief to step away from that game.
About 10 years ago, we hosted my college roomie for a couple of months, who was exhausted by Life, and had dark circles under her eyes that only increased the exhausted, gaunt look. Naturally, she stayed in the spare room where she’d have some square footage to herself.
The Big Mister gets up at 4:00 to get ready for work. One 5:00 a.m. as she slept the sleep of the near-dead, he apparently knocked softly on her door, cracked it open, and asked: “Mal, have you seen my pants?”
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Oh I can just picture it!
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That was certainly a turning point in his assumption that other people knew where his stuff was! His pants?! We still talk about it and laugh.
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This is so funny, and it starts when they’re very young. How many moms are expected to find Legos, board games, that special rock, tiny metal cars, etc. on a daily basis, when their sons claim those items are missing??
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I really do hide things from my husband. Especially the remote control or his hat….things he cannot do without for mere moments. It’s pretty funny. Now my daughter does it too!
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I’m sorry but that is just wrong! Funny…., but wrong!
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I hide myself from my husband! He wanders around hmmming and muttering confusedly. Usually I burst into a giggle from holding my breath, but it’s so danged fun to tease him! We live in 770 sq ft. Imagine my challenge and his, um, challenged, um, brain. Yeah, that’s it!
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There was a segment several years ago on the Today Show, where Katie Couric was interviewing a woman who had started a business to find missing and lost children.
Katie asked the woman: “Why would I hire a woman to do that?”
The entrepreneur smiled and responded: “A man can’t find the mustard in the refrigerator. You think one can find your kid?”
My husband gets incredibly annoyed when I tell that story. I have no idea why.
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That’s hysterical!
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Too funny! I’m loving your posts this week.
Your comment about your hubby and the sugar reminded me of this: when I was a little girl. I’d often ask my mom where something was. If I went to that location and told her I couldn’t find it, she would say: “If I get up, go there and find it, you’re going to get a spanking”. Of course, I never did — but it made me really look intently in that spot! Maybe you should try that with your….oh, never mind. 😉
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My mother used to say, “You mean it didn’t jump out and say, ‘Here I am’!”
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Are we married to the same man?
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Yeah, count me as on board on Monday, but maybe fading fast as I fear my man card melting _ well, if I could find the damn thing.
KIDDING.
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You are being a very brave blogger this week–telling tales about your man! I applaud you and can certainly identify with everything you’ve mentioned…my husband was exactly the same! And he has passed that gene on to our son…makes a person wonder what they think about when they are searching for something–baseball perhaps, or hockey, or time travel? It certainly isn’t ‘where would I be if I was that object I’m looking for’, because if it was, they would see it right in front of their eyes! Great post–keep them coming.
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Oh..it seems that I’m married to this exact same Waldo as you. If it’s not my fault..it’s definitely someone else’s. Even the poor dog has taken on that burden of blame and responsibility. Ever wonder where they’d be without us?!?!?
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I think I need to take a trip (slightly) north, dressed as your cleaning lady. I heard I just have to follow the sheep.
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Just stay away from the toothbrushes. My husband has a gun.
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I really like this one! My husband (ex) used to call me at work to ask where something was. He even called to to ask what was in the green contained at the back of the fridge.
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One evening I came home from a very long day at work and my one hour commute to find my ex-husband, who was attending law school at the time, sitting in the living room reading. After realizing he hadn’t made dinner, I whimpered, “Could you have at least boiled water? Couldn’t you make something for dinner?” He looked at me in a panic and said, “I couldn’t! You hid all the ingredients!”
It’s a cross we must bear – the yelling, the losing, the finding it right in front of their noses.
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We wives deliberately hide the ingredients.
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oh my goodness. hysterically true.
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Yes yes, I would have got the same – the cleaning ladies. And if not the cleaning ladies, his next response would be to ask me what “I” did with them when I moved them. It’s really quite comical.
Great posts – love this topic.
/S.
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I thought I married Waldo! All of the above is very true!
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Snap! Can’t argue with this one. Men are going to tell you that they have so many more important things on their minds that they simply can’t keep track of all that trivial stuff. Pish posh! When a man is hungry and has the refrigerator door open scanning like a drooling Doberman looking for the mustard and can’t find it when it’s right there in front of him, tell me, you’re wrong about men not being able to find things…
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My husband will stand in the kitchen, looking vaguely at the line between counter and cabinet and ask, “Do we have any milk?” He has stopped even trying to find things for himself. It’s sad, really.
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If I could only figure out a way to profit from my knowledge of “missing” items! Very funny !
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My husband cannot move anything when looking. But it’s a gene he’s passed on to his daughters as well. The lazy gene overtakes gender…
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