A column about ... umm ... I forget By Michelle Kennedy News-Chronicle I won't deny that I am often confused as a parent. I frequently founder between one issue and the next: the best way to discipline an undisciplinable preschooler or how to deal with a child who talks too much at school when I myself talk entirely too much at work. Even a seemingly simple decision about whether or not to use cloth or disposable diapers could send me into a frenzy of in-depth research at the public library. But one thing that constantly has me confused is the lost-and-found box at my children's school. I walked past it quite innocently during a school book fair and decided to take a look through the overflow of scarves and mittens to see if I could track down a sweatshirt I noticed had been frequently missing from my son's laundry pile. I dug into the abyss, and realizing I wouldn't be able to simply pull the items apart to look, I began to take them out and set them on the floor beside me. I pulled item after item out of the box. A scarf, normal enough. Then a mitten, and then, what's this? A shoe? Could be someone's gym shoe I suppose. Then a lunch box - with a lunch still inside. I set this far aside. Who give's chil- dren tuna anymore? Digging deeper, I found coats, back-packs and more shoes and boots. Doesn't anyone miss this stuff? I mean, you went into the school with two shoes on in the morning ... what happened between math class and getting on the bus? Did it not seem strange to the child that going home with only one shoe on was going to pose a couple of problems? Like a wet sock (oh, wait, I think I found the sock) or perhaps a cold foot? You don't have to be in the gifted-and-talented class to think that losing a shoe might be an issue. I can imagine the conversation now: "Johnny?" "Yes, Mom?' "Did you go to school with two shoes on Ns morning?" "Yes Mom." "What happened to your other shoe?" "I don't know." That is a child's answer to almost anything. "I don't know.' I don't even want to talk about the pants I found in the box. I hope it was a warm day. Now, don't think that I am immune to losing things. I lose things all of the time. My brain is at the top of the list. I think it came out during childbirth because all of a sudden I am no longer making fun of my father for not being able to remember why he walked into a room. This is a curious phenomenon. And sometimes I am really stupefied. I'll get up from the couch, walk to another area of the house and stand there, completely blank. Absolutely no idea what I was going to do. In an effort to jog my memory, I will do something else. Pick up some toys, wash a couple of dishes and then, lacking any memory recall, will go back to the book I was reading. Looking up a few seconds later wondering if the water for my tea is boiling yet and then remembering that I didn't put the kettle on because I couldn't remember to do it. Ugh. Standing there in the school library, surrounded by all of these forgotten things, I am amazed. How could they forget this stuff? Look at this backpack, I'll bet some mom paid at least $40 for it. What about these sneakers? I'll bet some poor dad had to search all over town for these on the day before school started and then had to shell out $80 because his son "just had to have them. I am mystified, but I try and wipe these thoughts from my mind as I resume my search. What was I looking for again? Kennedy is a reporter for the News-Chronicle and editor of Dot-Com magazine. She is the author of an upcoming series of parenting books called the 'Last Straw Strategies', due out in early 2003. This column appears Sundays. Contact her by calling 432-2941 or by sending e-mail to [email protected].