​You’ve probably had this happen before: the laundry is finished. You go to find a shirt or socks, shorts, whatever. The item you are looking for is nowhere to be found. How do you track it down because you know it’s in the house somewhere?
 
Recently, this puzzle arose in our home. I wear a long sleeve green Under Armour shirt for multiple athletic situations. With old man baseball starting again for the 2023 season, it has been in and out of the laundry successfully 4-5 times this spring. It’s re-emerged successfully until this past week, when it chose to make a disappearing act.
 
Where to start the hunt? Of course, the first place to look is the drawer where it is typically stored. Flipping through tee shirts revealed nothing. This was done twice for safety precautions.

Next, explore the baseball clothing storage drawer. Look through each item. Again, nothing.

Could it still be in the basement stuck to the top of the washer or dryer? Of course it could. Go downstairs. Spin the two appliances and look inside. See if anything drops or is adhering to the apparatus as the inanimate object mocks you. Nope.
 
Hmmm, okay, what’s next? Ah, perhaps it decided to stay in my baseball bag. This is a long shot. There’s no reason I would have taken it off and put it in there, but you never know. Forage around my glove, bat, shoes, batting helmet, used water bottle, sunscreen and it’s not there either, as expected.
 
Wait! The car! Maybe I took it off and flung it in there. No way. I never get undressed before I come home. Still, worth a shot. A quick examination proves my initial point that my memory is intact.

I invest my wife in the search. She suggests all the options I’ve already pursued, but I give the logical ones another fuller examination just to be sure (the two drawers).
 
When our kids were young, we always told them to retrace where they’d been to find things. Go through your memory. Recreate the situation. Follow it to its conclusion.

The problem with the green Under Armour shirt is I have no recollection of taking it off in any odd place. I stripped, tossed it in the laundry chute. Then put it away when the laundry was done.

As my wife enters the equation, she brings her ever-talented search skills into play. She forages here and there, sifting through things, getting a sense of the terrain. After a bit, I hear the “AHA, found it” moment. YES!
 
Where do you think it was? No place I’d searched, but someplace close.
 
When it went into its regular drawer, I placed it on top of my other tee shirts. Closing the drawer pushed the thin-layered Under Armour material through a crack and into the back BEHIND the drawer. My wife saw this, found the shirt, and we devised a coat hanger into a fish-hook to pull it out.
 
“I knew I’d find it,” she said. I knew she would, too. “I’m nothing if not determined,” she added. The oddity is why I didn’t ask her to help sooner. In the grand scheme of finding clothes, hopefully I’ll add this one to my life learning curve.

​Here’s how far things have gotten out of control: I’m a graduate of the University of Illinois, and one of the few sports I still avidly root for is their basketball team. This past week, the prognosticators decided that the Illinois basketball team is a bubble team in the NCAA tournament in March 2024 (meaning they might qualify for the tournament or they might not). That’s how far things have gotten out of control when it comes to the prognosticating society in which we live.

I’ve ranted on this subject multiple times, but this “year in advance” opinion about what the basketball team might do relative to the NCAA tourney is too much. Rather than reporting and showing facts and figures and telling a story about something that happened, our so-called newscasters (actually opinioncasters) decide to tell us something that’s about to happen. Who the heck knows how they come to these predictions? They never have to defend their research or how they came to their conclusions, so they can say whatever they want. The incredible thing to me is how much stock so many people seem to put into what the talking heads have to say.
 
This predictive analysis so heavily infects our lives that most probably are unaware how much we’re affected daily by these personal statements. From stocks, to sports, to politics, to the environment, to the economy, we are told over and over and over about how things are going to turn out. So, we should worry or place bets or find shelter or not vote or build a cabin in the woods to deal with the whatever it is that the people on TV are ramming down our throats.
 
My older brother has a thing about how stupid it is that before the NFL season even starts, a full prediction is given by various people who cover pro football. They pick the winners of each division and literally go through the playoffs, determining each game and the Super Bowl winner. How silly is that? That league is so competitive that most games are 50-50, particularly the first half of the season. You don’t even know which teams are above average until nine games have been played. Then you have the injuries, which no one can predict, that devastate a front-runner or make a quarterback ineffective because his two most reliable receivers are out for the season. But, they still predict in August what will happen the following February.
 
The stock market and economy and interest rates and the housing market receive similar treatment from the so-called experts, as we’re told the ups and downs and where things are headed depending on the whim of the day. It’s babble. White noise. They have nothing of true news value to discuss so they argue back and forth on trivialities to keep viewers interested.
 
Just this past week, every single announcer I listened to when the NBA decided who would win the lottery and get the top draft pick this June, WHICH WILL BE VICTOR WEMBAMYAMA FROM FRANCE BY THE WAY, said that he will be the BIGGEST GAME CHANGER IN THE NBA SINCE LEBRON JAMES. Okay, we’ll take your word for it, just like Chet Holmgren, Zion Williamson, Greg Oden, Yao Ming and others were supposed to change the NBA landscape before injuries changed their lives.
 
Here's the thing: life changes. Events occur. Things we can’t predict actually occur that change the world or who wins a game or the price of gasoline. We can’t factor in everything. Data can only take you so far. And opinions are just opinions. Some people may be more informed than others or have greater experience, but remember they are trying to influence you, not inform you. Take it for what it’s worth.

​Several months back I pondered an idea, and thought to myself, “That will not turn out the way you think it will.” That made me consider the concept of how we project what will occur in our lives. We see a certain path and figure that will make it so.
 
When I put together these columns, I often get a seed and plant it, followed by watering. It germinates, grows roots. I wrote that thought down – “NOTHING ever turns out the way you want it to or hope it should.” It has now simmered for many weeks, been reinforced by other events that make it more relevant.
 
The reality we all face vs. our projection of how we think something will turn out probably causes each of us the most repeated cognitive dissonance because of how pervasive this syndrome is. Think first how difficult it is not to project into the future. Just take each day as it comes. Don’t hope for an outcome. Don’t plan for contingencies. Accept whatever comes your way and respond accordingly.
 
That’s difficult, probably impossible for a human to do. Our brains don’t function that way. Let’s take a common example – finding and starting a job.
 
When you interview for a new position, you are typically given a list of tasks that will be involved for you to do on a regular basis. That list is not exhaustive. You know there will be many other things you must do if you accept the position. You also will come to know that items you are told will be part of the job actually aren’t.
 
The point of this is you expect to do certain things and not other stuff. The reality once you take the job is that you’ll do things you weren’t told about, and certain things you were told you’d be doing won’t be part of your daily routine. It doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would.
 
Another example could be a sports team you play for. You know your teammates and how the season turned out the previous year. Based on the competition and your preparation, you think the upcoming season will turn out a certain way.

Then, someone gets hurt. Another teammate loses his job and has to move to another state to stay employed. Three people take vacations at the same time and you’re short-handed during those weeks and each game you get hammered (games you expected to win).

The season turns out not at all what you expected. You hoped for a solid third place finish, perhaps even second with some luck. Instead, you’re just a step away from landing in the cellar. The season didn’t turn out the way you expected.
 
The weather person predicts thunderstorms for tomorrow at a specific time. You know the odds of this happening are slim, yet you let that affect whether you’re going for a bike ride. The day doesn’t turn out the way you thought it would.
 
This occurs in almost all facets of life. You start a relationship, and you believe things will work a certain way. Over time, there are so many unexpected variables that you realize it’s best to lower your expectations and raise your acceptance level.