the almost great search




in our own house, we do stash things or cache small but valuable items in secret places. sometimes, this stashing or hiding is not made known to the others in the family and sometimes, even the whereabout of it is kept from the other members of the household.

i have heard of an old lady who kept a bundle of money (notes) in a shoe box. the rest of the family members only came to know about it after the box had been thrown away. some people do not keep their money in the house; they hide it under the floor mat of their car. a colleague of mine who bought a used car found about $600 under the floor mat.

this is my own story. my wife used my brown civil defence uniform to safe-keep her diamond ring. i was totally in the dark about it. after ten years of volunteer service, i was told that my unit was being disbanded and that i had to return my uniform, including my belt and beret. in fact, the whole cohort, which numbered a few hundred, had to do it.

you can guess what happened. after i had surrended my uniform to the store, my wife suddenly realised that the ring was still in the shirt pocket. when we went to the store that same night, a mountain of brown shirts met our eyes. daunting as the task seemed, we had to face the fact that we might have to search the whole night for the treasured item.

fortunately for us, i had returned the uniform only the night before. so, 'my shirt' should be somewhere at the beginning of the pile. as luck would have it, we struck pay dirt with the first lot of shirts. we found it in the first pile of about ten shirts.