Tuesday March 4, 2025

Untwisting Clutter-Minded Madness

By Steve Eskew

Panic! Panic! Panic! 

Where’s my phone? Where’s the TV remote? Where the devil did I hide my inflatable woman? Has anyone seen my hearing aid? Where’s Waldo?

With my feet firmly planted in mid-air, my insufferable routine of misplacing items never fails to flop me into slapstick rage. And please don’t blame these silly fits of fury on “senior moments.”

In my 20s, I used to grunt and grapple with myself a dozen times before breakfast: “Where did you put it, you dizzy ninny? It’s indispensable!” (as indispensable as the only draft of my thesis could be).

However, years before I turned 19, I swear I had been the crowned geek of structure and control, a pompous mathlete who never misplaced so much as a digit. Credit that discipline to obsessive-compulsive disorder.  

Ah, but age 19 promptly launched the onslaught of a more chaotic disorder — bipolar, aka the scatterbrain menace.

Prior to bipolar I had absolutely reveled in playing chess during my first year in college. Whilst I was no grand master (except in my geekiest  fantasies), I had championed myself as at least a master in the art of concentrating. And I incessantly gloated over my moments of checkmating. 

But when bipolar episodes sent mindless racing thoughts roaring into my psyche, I became cursed with the attention span of a newly hatched gnat. It was farewell Mr. Checkmate and hi-ho Mr. Featherbrain.

Checkers anyone?

The only time I can concentrate is when I’m writing or reading. The minute I leave my book or put away my pen, my mind scatters into hideous places and centers on anything except what I’m doing.

Happily, I’m not exactly an absent-minded professor. I’m more of a clutter-minded professor. What a gift!

For years, I’ve scolded myself: Focus, you fool! Get your head outta your...derrière?

But, just when I had resigned to be a scrambled egghead forever, salvation arrived in the form of St, Anthony, the patron saint of lost articles.

I learned a rhyming prayer to invoke his spirit: “St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come around. Something’s lost that must be found.”

Doubt me if you dare, but I swear that St. Anthony has actually assumed permanent residency inside my brain. 

Before bonding with St. Anthony, I was just a lost-in-space cadet, delirious from  playing hide-and-go-seek with items of various importance. 

But nowadays St. Anthony nudges me in the right direction. And I find lost articles in unbelievable places at top speed.

For example, recently my partial denture disappeared. I had taken it out of my mouth while eating corn chips that had caused a little mouth soreness. 

My mind must have wobbled into automatic drift. The next time I tried to eat something, my partial was missing. Normally, that would have called for a panic attack, but not now.

With St. Anthony onboard, I was guided to a place where no one would have ever looked for the false teeth — in the garbage, inside an empty package of Fritos, of course. 

How in the...? I don’t even want to know.

Over the years, the St. Anthony blessing has threaded its way into my subconscious. A perpetual presence. Sometimes, all I have to do is mumble, “Where did I put . . .” and presto! The article appears.

Goodbye to time-consuming and futile searchings. Nowadays, the speed in which I find things is magical. 

Ah ha! I’ve just noticed my hearing aid on the floor before I even knew it was missing. 

Of course, I still have bipolar panic attacks for the few seconds that I’m missing an item because sometimes I’m too embarrassed to summon St. Anthony. Like when I can’t find my harem of inflatable women. 

As a matter of fact, I just this very moment have realized that my sunglasses, my very expensive sunglasses, have vamoosed into nowheresville.

And, immediately the nagging thought of those missing sunglasses has begun gnawing at me like a brain worm. Oh-where-oh-where-oh-where-oh?

But missing sunglasses stand as yet another of those instances whereby I’m too sheepish to appeal for St. Anthony’s help. 

I certainly won’t bother St. Anthony during my frustrations when I play that insane game, "Where’s Waldo?" I grit my teeth. Oh-where-oh-where-oh-where-oh is Waldo, Waldo, Waldo? At least I spotted my hearing aid.

Forget Waldo. Forget the stupid sunglasses. Maybe my ultimate bidding to the spirit within me should be an unconditional surrender: Oh, St. Anthony, pease stick around. My marbles are missing. Will they ever be found?

— Steve Eskew 

After many years of tackling theater and book reviews, profiles and playwriting projects, Steve Eskew is hard at work on a nonfiction anthology, Tommy’s Mind. Steve swears his favorite pastime will always be humor writing, an affection that began while writing a humor column for The Gateway, a school newspaper at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. A retired businessman, Steve received a pair of master’s degrees in both dramatic arts and communication studies from that university after he turned 50. No Rhodes Scholar to be sure, Steve sometimes bewails his academic writing as probably funnier than his humor pieces. Check out his humor blog, ESKEWPADES.