The Wayward Spiral

This morning I woke up and felt like something was missing. I feel like this a lot of mornings upon waking, but usually it's just one of those "who am I and where do I belong" type conundrums that I forget about by lunchtime. Today there was something actual and concrete missing from my world and I couldn't figure out what it was.

I took my shower, brushed my teeth, got dressed. When I walked into my living room I noticed that I had left my hummus out on the coffee table overnight. So that must be it. I must have been feeling lost because I knew I had forgotten to do something semi-important the night before. It's the funniest thing too, because I can't tell for the life of me if the hummus went bad. It's got an overpowering smell to begin with so it's not like it suddenly smells rank like sour milk or something.

Anyway, I forgot about my emptiness for a while after I replaced the hummus in the fridge. Note to self: don't let any of your guests eat that hummus.

Then I packed up my books for class. Women's lit. Religion & film. Respective notebooks. Respective folders. Day planner. Journal. Journal. Journal? Bueller?

It was nowhere to be found. Not in desk drawers, not in closets, not under chairs or in my laundry basket. Not in the fridge with the spoiled (?) hummus. It was just simply gone. I didn't have time to look for too much longer so I began to walk nervously to class, feeling strangely like I wasn't wearing trousers or like I was sleepwalking the night before and unconsciously plucked off one of my eyebrows.

Now, reader, you must understand the importance of this, the mysterious disappearing notebook which eluded me so cunningly and cruelly this morning. I carry this notebook with me everywhere. I fill at least a page every day with some of my most vulnerable thoughts and musings. I've got song lyrics in it, poetry, hypothetical conversations between myself and people I love, even a really embarrassing sharpie cartoon drawing of Weezer.

What if someone finds it? I can't even imagine. I don't have my name in it. The closest ID stamp within the pages is a cartoon self-portrait that only vaguely resembles me. If someone were to find this notebook, he or she would have a field day leafing through pages and pages of my existence. He could steal all my good ideas and chastise the bad ones. He could read the most unfinished and sophomoric passages aloud to members of the English department.

The English department. Located in Marting Hall. I was in Marting Hall when I realized that literally every one of my classes this semester is in Marting Hall (the philosophy and religion departments are located here as well.) There was still an off chance that my spiral notebook could have found its way to one of the tables in the Union or the Cyber Cafe (where there are FOOTBALL PLAYERS! Eeesh!) but I've only eaten there three or four times this semester. It had to be in Marting.

Frantically, I ran up to Barb in the English office. Barb is one of those all-knowing secretaries that every institution seems to have one of. She's Superwoman. She's untouchable. She's probably got a third eye or something. Anyway, I talked to her and she showed me that the only item in the English "lost and found" was a yellow folder. But she told me to go upstairs and check the Religion office.

I've never run up that third flight of stairs faster in my life. And this is saying a lot because that third flight is a killer. The stairs in Marting are insanely steep because the engineers of this building all those decades ago must have thought that they needed to conserve space. Or maybe it was designed for the pygmy literati.

Anyway, I made it up the stairs and as soon as the secretary in the Religion Office put the defibrillator paddles back in her desk, I resumed normal breathing and from my reclined position on the floor I noticed, in a small printer paper box top under a table to my left...

my spiral notebook.

It's okay.

It's going to be okay.

I'm gonna go buy one of those child leashes now. Later.