How does a tablecloth get misplaced? That is to say a tablecloth that is in use, one that was used for the breakfast table, and ordinarily post-breakfast the tablecloth gets a shake-out the side door, gets neatly folded and placed away for use the following morning. It's gone. Not where it should be.

I use a routine, one tablecloth used for breakfast, another for our evening meals and on Friday evenings when we have our evening meal in the dining room, yet another tablecloth is put into use. The breakfast-and-dinner tablecloths are washed weekly, when other, fresh tablecloths are exchanged for those that have been used throughout the course of a week.

Gone, nowhere to be found. I've got, I believe, a fairly orderly mind, and this shouldn't happen, should it? This kind of thing. Well, it does occasionally; something will be misplaced and hidden from view, frustratingly and maddeningly. I've put the wrong things in the wrong places on occasion, who hasn't?

I think I know what occasioned the disappearance of the tablecloth; the tail end of our breakfast was interrupted by the doorbell ringing, and then the telephone followed suit. My husband responded to the former while I did the latter. We were both kept a prolonged period of time at either of our responses. And while I was on the telephone, I became distracted; easily done when I'm speaking with our daughter.

Somehow, the tablecloth is involved in this little mystery of my mind going off on a tangent. It's there, somewhere, lurking mischievously in some drawer, on some shelf, in a corner somewhere I haven't yet checked, bedevilling me.