“Look Like You’re Looking for Candy”

Can you spot the iPad?

That’s what my grandmother used to say, when she sent us down to the basement to get her some ingredient from the freezer or the shelves down there.

She simply wanted what she wanted without having to go down herself. And she really didn’t want you to come back empty-handed and say you couldn’t find it.

But she was teaching a valuable life skill.

Neither my teen-aged kids nor my husband can ever find anything.

They’re all smart, but none of them seem to grasp a simple concept: if you’re looking for something, that something might be behind or under something else. You might have to move things around to see.

This morning, my husband was looking for his iPad. He asked us, a bit testily, what we did with it. He “looked” where it might be. He didn’t find it.

Just now, I saw it: on the counter where he said he looked. There was a magazine on top of it. But it was visible.

I have a hiding spot in the kitchen for snacks that everybody loves but which are for the kids’ lunches. I hesitate to call it a hiding spot. I simply put the snacks in a drawer or a cabinet and then put something on top of or in front of them.

Poof! Like magic, they disappear.

Both husband and kids claim they have “torn the kitchen apart,” looking.

My husband says, when he can’t find something, he hesitates to ask me because I will look where he just did and find it. (And I have been known to be snarky about that.)

I would tell them to look like they’re looking for candy, but with those snacks, they are looking for candy.