The Brownie's Hiding Place

Sunday mornings are always lazy. It was no different today, January 17, 2016. I was drinking coffee in the kitchen. The doorbell rang, startling me out of my reverie.

We have an intercom. Then, unexpectedly, the doorbell rang.

"So, it's ours. Probably the neighbors," Mom said and went to answer it.

I always get nervous when strangers come over, because almost no one ever comes, and when the intercom rings, Mom and I ask each other, "Are you waiting for someone?"

This time, it was the neighbor downstairs, Kesha.

And another leak. This time, it was the radiator pipe in my room. Luckily, at the time, as they say, "everyone was home," so we managed to catch it right away.

Soon, the emergency crew arrived, two people at once. One ran to the basement to turn off the hot water, and as soon as everything in the basement was shut off, the other got to work.

The sofa was in the way. I had to lift it up to get to the leaking radiator pipe.

And then the plumber exclaimed:

"You've got a whole underground hair salon here!"

At first, I didn't understand what he was talking about, but then, peering over his shoulder, I saw it for myself. Hairpins, barrettes, combs, and hair ties lay in one corner, thickly covered in dust. Everything that had disappeared over the years.

I admit, I often lost hairpins because I have a habit of sleeping with them on and throwing them everywhere. Combs would be fine—I'm a klutz, and if I couldn't find a comb in my room that was visible this morning, I'd just go buy a new one. But hairpins, on my sofa? Where did they come from? And in such a quantity? I never use hairpins! All the hairpins that only Mom uses are mobilized near the dressing table in the main room, which is connected to my bedroom only by a hallway. So there's no way they could have made it into my room!

As I explored the suddenly discovered "underground hair salon," I felt as if these things, which had been disappearing regularly for years, had been deliberately brought under my sofa and piled ALL together in an inaccessible corner of the bed, out of reach of the ubiquitous vacuum hose!

I don't know, but thinking about today's incident, I remember another that happened in my little room just recently.

My newly purchased warm tights had gone missing. After rummaging through every closet in the house and almost despairing of finding them, I was getting ready to buy some more when I suddenly noticed the dresser drawer wasn't closing properly.

 When I managed to slide a narrow lamp under the dresser with great difficulty, I discovered a whole warehouse of brand-new, unworn tights!

You might say that they simply slipped into the crack between the back of the dresser and the drawer in the slippery plastic packaging... Perhaps. But why just tights and nothing else? And isn't that too much of a coincidence?