Lost things in China

There is a Patron Saint of Lost Things, St. Anthony, as Judy can attest to. Let me tell you of a couple of lost things that didn't stay lost for very long in cities of millions and millions. You can see me wearing a blue Columbia Yazoo hat is most pictures I am in. While shopping in the Silk Market in Beijing, we had piled all our coats on top of the double stroller because of all the heat generated while shopping. When we were approaching the fourth floor on the escalator, we had a mishap. All the coats slipped off but we managed to catch them before they got ground up in the escalator. I noticed a short time later that I was missing my hat (you need a hat in China in the winter time). I looked through all the coats and in the stroller but it was gone. Tiffany and I backtracked a bit on that floor but no one had seen it. I said it is no use and we continued on with shopping. I would need to buy a new hat. Tiffany and I decided to go to the basement to finish shopping. As we were approaching the basement on the down escalator, I spotted something blue on the floor on the other side of the glass hand railing of the escalator. It only took me a second to realize it was my hat. It had fallen in the small space between the up and down escalators from the fourth floor to the basement, landing on the floor between the glass hand railing of the escalator and a building wall. As we were exiting the escalator, I reached over the hand railing and snatched up my hat. I was thankful for that because it was kind of cold outside.

The other episode I had was in Tianjin and I lost one of the nose pads on my glasses. One of them fell off my glasses (part of the plastic where the screw goes through broke so it would fall off). It fell off three times while in China. I actually found it all three times, too. Had I not found it, I would have been walking around looking out of crooked glasses, that would be digging into my nose. But one time I thought it was almost a goner. We were all crowded into a small Honda Civic taxi cab (us four adults plus two children and the driver). I guess you really don't worry about seat belts in China because we were crammed in there so tight, we could not move. Well the nose pad fell off again inside the cab and it was night and therefore dark. When we got back to Kyle's apartment, I carefully looked on my coat, inside shirt and coat pockets and inside the cab. I thought it was gone for good. Even the driver got out and looked in the back seat with a flashlight. Then I spied something shiny on the pavement about 1.5 feet underneath the cab. So I kept my eye on it, hoping it was what I was looking for. So as the cab drove off and did not run over it, I bent down picked up a small clear plastic thing that turned out to be the missing nose pad to my glasses. Amazing. When I got home I went to the store and got new ones. Maybe there really is such a thing as a St. Anthony, Patron Saint of Lost Things (well I didn't say the little jingle that goes along with it). I do not have any pictures to prove any of this so you will just need to take my work for it. The End.