We’ve all been there... the Mystery of the Safe Place

First and foremost, I would like to clarify that I am not, in fact, referring to the mental realm that my yoga teacher tells us to visit as we lie on the floor at the end of a session, trying to work out which body part hurts the most. I am instead talking about the Safe Place where you put things of High Importance to keep them from getting lost, only to immediately lose them.

I have heard several theories as to the mysterious vanishing act executed by the Safe Place. The first is that after carefully putting the item there, you are so overcome with your own efficiency and organisation that while you are congratulating yourself on having permanently secured the safety of said item, your brain decides that since it no longer needs to worry about this, it promptly forgets it and moves on to other important agendas, like wondering what’s for dinner and why seals always look so forlorn. Seriously, they are adorable and everyone loves them, so why the puppy dog eyes? Thus, when you come to need your item of High Importance, you cannot for the life of you recall where you put it, only that you did, indeed, put it Somewhere Safe. Cue lots of self-berating and halfhearted cursing of seals.

Another suggestion as to why exactly the Safe Place is so inefficient draws on the fact that usually, in order to protect the item from becoming collateral damage in the process of your daily existence, you choose a place far removed from your general field of awareness. This place can range from somewhere vaguely sensible, like the tallest shelf in the house or at the back of a wardrobe, to the illogically quirky, such as in a once-loved and now forgotten shoe.

While this may well prevent it from getting jumbled up with other daily accumulations, or becoming yet another item that’s got lodged in your foot, it also means that you are less likely to casually come across it and vaguely store it in the useful part of your brain which likes to pop up every now and again and help out. You know the bit I mean; it’s the part that notes that your phone is on the arm of the sofa as you glide obliviously past, and reminds you of this fact when you are about to start turning the house upside down half an hour later in search of it. By its nature, the Safe Place must be somewhere isolated from damage, and as such it passes under your brain’s radar.

It seems, then, that much like tacos, chocolate-flavoured tea and scarves with pockets, the whole concept of the Safe Place is brilliant in theory but flawed in practice. Unless you plan on investing in a safe, accept the rule of the Safe Place, shove everything on the bedside table or into a shoe and hope that your brain will pick up the slack.