“Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most,” read the bumper sticker on the pickup truck in front of me as I drove home from the supermarket in the grip of one of those awful moments of truth: I had forgotten to buy coffee. Since a day without caffeine is like a day without blood in my veins, that thought-provoking slogan hit home like a dope slap.
This was the same week that the fourth installment of George Lucas’ space series, “Star Wars: Episode One - The Phantom Menace” was splashing across theater screens everywhere. Who needs to go to the movies to learn about a Phantom Menace, I thought as I reviewed my recent history of losing things and forgetting errands as well as the names of regular customers.” For years, I’ve had one of those living at my shop.
Just last week, its ugly specter loomed anew as I searched through every nook and cranny looking for my hemostats. “Did anybody see them?” I whined to the usual gallery of blank stares. The week before, Joe’s new #10 blade vanished into thin air right off his tabletop and no one has a clue what happened to Lynne’s favorite nail clippers. “Maybe they went to the same place where all those single socks end up when you do the laundry,” quipped Patti. Nobody laughed.
In the retail section, that devilish Phantom routinely hides Missi’s pricing gun and we think he eats ballpoint pens for lunch. For two days he must have been snickering as he kept one of the portable phones hidden behind the kitty litter display. He’s even stolen a groomer’s paycheck. It had to be cancelled and reissued, vanishing forever into the void.
I can’t begin to list the little things he’s absconded with, like dryer brushes, grooming nooses, the screws to my clipper and the tops of the styptic powder jars, but how in the world did he manage to make off with a wheel to my dryer? At least I could take comfort in the tale of another groomer who claims to have temporarily misplaced one of these clunky mechanical workhorses for weeks in some far-flung corner of her shop.
We chuckled about that at a recent convention as we viewed one of those new mobile grooming units where there is no wasted space and absolutely no clutter. We felt lightheaded, like we had entered a different galaxy, as we shielded our eyes from the shine in that bright and sterile space, so foreign to our own wild and woolly workplaces.
I returned to my shop like a woman possessed, determined to get organized, starting with those groomer caddies which had been placed at each station to keep things in order a few years back. I could have opened a flea market with the stuff I found in these catch basins on wheels!
In one young lady’s top drawer, I found a rubber likeness of Sting, the wrestler, along with a pair of beige canvas wedgies from K-Mart. As I sneezed from the dust on those babies, I wondered with fear and dread if they could be poised for a fashion comeback. Well hidden under dog hair in the drawer below was the pocket organizer I had given her back in January with not one notation written inside. There was also a roll of Lifesavers with furry overcoats, a corkscrew and a swizzle stick from the local pub. This gal is ready to celebrate at a moment’s notice.
Another groomer was a pack rat for paper goods, I discovered, unearthing a collection of Intergroom booklets from the last six years as well as every Christmas card she had ever received from customers or fellow workers. She also had a pile of menus from local restaurants, some now defunct, and a “Personals” magazine from the days when she was single . . .I think.
I got over feeling superior when I looked inside my own caddy. There I saw a collection of prehistoric grooming tools worthy of the Smithsonian - clippers featuring screws with which to attach blades, dematting devices with injectable razor blades which could be considered lethal weapons and huge dematting rakes resembling something out of a Freddy Krueger movie. There was a threatening letter scrawled in the heat of passion by an ex-employee who left on rather bad terms and various tiny pieces of hardware from blades and clippers foreign to everyone with the possible exception of Mike Robertson and his family.
I donned my protective mask and dusted away, amazed at all the space I had freed up in my cleaning frenzy. My daughter watched from a safe distance, occasionally offering such comments as, “Well, Mom, one of the things about being so disorganized is that you’re always making exciting discoveries.” I force-dried the dust in her direction for that one.
The next day, I took an informal survey among my staff, asking them to list some things they had lost since they began grooming in my shop.
“My boyfriend,” sighed one groomer. “He got grossed out by a few dog hairs one night when he went to kiss me.”
“My lunch,” answered another. “It was last spring when that Springer came in. Remember the one you said had the world’s record for the largest number of ticks?”
“My illusions about women,” Joe chimed in. “I had no idea of the things they talk about at work! No offense, but you guys could embarrass Dr. Ruth!”
“My sense of shock,” replied my daughter. “I can’t believe the things people tell me! The other day, a client warned me that her Shih Tzu gets vicious when its tail is touched ever since she accidentally sucked it up with the vacuum cleaner. Then there was the one who lifted up her dress to ask if her rash looked like flea bites.”
I’d love to blame everything on The Phantom but it’s not always possible. Sometimes things aren’t really lost - they are just misplaced.
Take the case of the stool sample a customer asked me to deliver to the vet after her office next door was closed. Since it was stored in a sealed plastic container tucked inside a bag, I stuck it in the refrigerator to be delivered on Monday when I came back to work. That thought vanished with a whoosh into the Black Hole inside my brain until a few weeks later when Joe emerged from the break room carrying his soda and the forgotten bag. “I don’t know what was in here but we should probably throw it out,” he told me. “I think it’s spoiled.”