The Garage Has Eaten My Washers

I wanted 2 washers. That was the entire job. Nothing complicated, nothing remotely deserving of an afternoon. I have a box of assorted washers somewhere in the garage or workshop. I know I have it because I have used it often enough, and because buying a box of assorted washers is exactly the sort of sensible thing you do so that, when you need 2 washers, you can simply go and get them.

 
Except the box had vanished.

I looked where it normally lives, then in the places where I might reasonably have moved it. After that the search became progressively less rational, because garages encourage that sort of thing. You start with some confidence in your own filing system and end up opening drawers that have no conceivable connection with the object you are looking for, just in case some previous version of yourself had a moment of inspiration that now looks indistinguishable from idiocy.

Still no washer box, so I decided to make an espresso and take it into the garage while I continued looking. This seemed civilised enough. There is no reason why the disappearance of a box of washers should also deprive me of coffee.

A little later I went back into the kitchen and realised I had left the cup in the garage. So I went back to fetch it and discovered that the cup had now disappeared as well.

This was rather more difficult to explain. A washer box can vanish in a garage because there are boxes everywhere and because things migrate. But the espresso cup is about the size of an egg cup and I had been drinking from it only minutes earlier. I knew roughly where I had been standing. It should have been one of the easier objects in the building to locate.

Apparently not.

I carried on looking for the washer box and eventually opened a drawer. There, for reasons entirely beyond me, was the espresso cup. I have absolutely no recollection of putting it there. At some point I had evidently decided that a workshop drawer was a perfectly sensible temporary home for crockery, and had done so without the event making enough impression on my brain to survive for more than a few minutes.

This, I think, is the real nature of garages. You go in with a clear purpose, but the place interferes with the chain of thought. Something catches your eye, which reminds you of another job, and before long the original object has become merely one unresolved matter among several. The garage itself seems to operate on a different filing system, in which things are never exactly lost but are placed somewhere you would never think to look until you are searching for something else.

The most infuriating part is that I know the washer box will eventually turn up. It will probably be somewhere perfectly visible, in a place I have already searched more than once. I will stare at it for several seconds and wonder how on earth I failed to see it before.

Meanwhile, the original job remains undone.

I went into the garage wanting 2 washers. I came out having discovered that I am apparently capable of filing an espresso cup in a drawer.

The washer box is still missing.