"'Tis better to have lost and found..."

    Remember the old riddle "why did the moron bang his head against the wall?"  Answer: because it felt so good when he stopped.  Here's a variant: "'Tis better to have lost and found than never to have lost at all."
   Think about it.  Let's say you (unintentionally) misplace your wedding ring.  After years of taking it off every night and putting it on the dresser with your house keys, it is gone.  This once happened to me.  My wife, truth to tell, was skeptical.  "How could you lose your wedding band?"  Easy for her to say; she always wears hers, even to bed.  Well, one day it turned up (reappeared, I like to think) and I haven't lost it since.  But here's the thing; bad as I felt having lost it (stupid, too), I felt better after I found it than if I'd never lost it at all.
   Last week involved an additional loss, the third in a series of scatterbrained mishaps spanning three days.  On Wednesday, I took my gloves off to open my apartment mailbox.  No sooner did I arrive upstairs, when the trusty doorman arrived at my door with said gloves.  If that wasn't bad enough, the same thing happened on Thursday with a small package that had arrived for me--once again the doorman came to my rescue, my mental stock no doubt diminished.  Were these "senior moments?"  God, I hoped not.  When, on Saturday, my wife and I were leaving for New Jersey where we would be spending the night with my older son and his family, I couldn't find my car keys.  Come on, I thought; this is getting serious.  They were not where they should have been; right there on my dresser, next to my house keys and (yeah) wedding ring.  Okay, I thought, retrace your steps. I knew I had them the day before (a Friday).   I had played indoor tennis and remember as I was getting into--or out of--the car noticing that the key was sticking out of my pocket on my warm-up suit.  Be careful, I said to myself.  With the key (I thought) safely back in my pocket, I used the back-up (or valet) key that I leave with the car in the parking garage in my building.  When I got home, I remember having draped the pants of the warm-up suit over a chair before later hanging them up.  Maybe the keys were in there, or perhaps on the floor near where I had left the pants.   No luck there, nor in the warm-up jacket.  They were not in my tennis bag, or in either pocket of my jacket. A further search would have to await my return from my son's.
   Once out at my son's house, I searched the trunk of the car, under the front seat, even the floor of the back-seat.  Nada.  When I came back home the next day, I searched the entire apartment (with flashlight yet), not even sparing my wife's  pocketbooks (just in case).  Little boxes on the dresser and chests of drawers were not immune.  Still nothing.  I had but three (long)  shots left that day.  I would re-search the car (fat chance, that), survey the area where I had parked in Brooklyn near the tennis facility (even slimmer), and check with the front desk of Prospect Park Tennis to see if I had left them there (yeah, right).  After asking the parking garage attendant if my keys had turned up (he said "no," but helpfully brought a flashlight over to the car).  Just as he arrived with the longest flashlight I've ever seen, I found the elusive "smart" key lodged between the driver's seat and the hand brake.  Boy, was I happy.  When I arrived at my destination, I told the first person I encountered on the street my good news.  He took it amiably.  What, I hear you ask, is my point?
   Simply this. As I told a tennis chum of mine named Ron (with whom I usually discuss more weighty issues, such as the existence vel non of God), that I was happier having found the keys I had so despaired of as having lost than I would have been had I never lost them.  He took exception to this, wondering how the joy of having found them could have possibly offset the three days of fruitless search and frustration over the loss.   While I guess there is a genuine philosophical issue here--as only a masochist (or the above-cited moron) would have enjoyed losing things so he could even more relish their recovery, my take is a bit different.  Not only did I not enjoy losing the keys, I was angry at myself, frustrated, disappointed,  and anxious over their loss.  In addition, such keys cost $300 to replace (I know, because I had called the dealer).  But all these things said, the joy of having found them consisted of not only the savings of the replacement cost, but the reassurance that the loss itself was understandable.  They had fallen out of my pocket either while I was driving or entering/exiting the car.  This was not stupid, neglectful, or a sign of encroaching senescence--it was just something that happened.  Add to that my perseverance in leaving no stone unturned in my search, and actually finding them bespoke some sort of skill.  After all, I had already searched the car.  Doesn't it take a special kind of guy--obsessive-compulsive say some--to conduct a third (and hitherto fruitless) search of the very car that contained the keys?  Hence my joy, which, for all these reasons outweighed the (temporary) pain of loss.
   Okay, now for the denouement. Remember my friend Ron and our philosophical discussions?  As an ever-questioning theist, I want to, for the moment, set aside issues of the afterlife.  I don't know whether or not there is a heaven or hell, but this much I do know.   If you have lived a good life, when you die, you are given access to a special room.  This celestial lost-and-found room contains all the things you have ever lost, but never found.  In it is the vanished left pig-skin glove which disappeared one day while riding the IRT to South Ferry; the photograph you were taking to the camera store to have it digitally enlarged and fell out of its envelope en route (a photo in which you and your wife looked impossibly young and attractive); the autographed postcard singed by Rocky Marciano ("keep punching, Johnny"), the first edition of Alastair Cooke's "A Generation on Trial," and (for some, but not me) a wedding ring.  I believe the keys were in that room, patiently awaiting my posthumous visit.  I further believe that (to alleviate my misery) the big fella decided to spare me this one indignity, and allowed them to reappear in the one spot I had failed to look.  Forgive me, Ron, but "thank you, Lord."