Kathy Salzberg
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read

UNMEMORABLE MOMENTS

“Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most,” read the bumper sticker on the van I was following too closely as I drove home from the supermarket. It was an aha moment — I had forgotten to buy coffee. Since for me a day without caffeine is like a day without blood in my veins, that thought-provoking slogan hit me upside the head like a dope slap.

I started reviewing my recent history of forgetting things — sales tax payments, phone numbers, the names of regular clients, even my glasses when they were right where I had stuck them — up on top of my head. At my grooming shop, I was losing things left and right too. First it was my hemostats, a tool used to pluck hair from inside the dogs” ears. (Back in the day, they were known as roach clips — or so I’ve heard.)

The week before, Joey’s new clipper blade had vanished into thin air right off his tabletop and no one has a clue what had happened to Lynne’s favorite nail clippers. “Maybe they went to the same place where all those single socks end up when you do the laundry,” quipped Patti. Nobody laughed.

In the retail section, the pricing gun went missing and someone must have been eating all the ballpoint pens for lunch. A groomer lost her paycheck the same day I had written it. And how the heck did one of floor-standing dryers manage to lose one of its wheels? At least I could take comfort in the tale of a fellow groomer who temporarily misplaced one of those clunky mechanical workhorses for weeks in some far-flung corner of her shop. We had all chuckled about that at a recent pet industry convention as we toured one of those nifty mobile grooming units where there was no wasted space and absolutely no clutter. We grew lightheaded as we walked through the swanky salon on wheels, as if we had entered a different galaxy. We shielded our eyes from the glare in that bright and sterile space, so foreign to our own wild and woolly workplaces.

I returned to my shop like a woman possessed, determined to get organized, starting with those groomer caddies which I had placed at each station to keep things in order a few years back. I could have opened a flea market with the stuff I found in these catch basins on wheels.

In one young lady’s top drawer, I found a rubber likeness of The Rock, the wrestler turned actor turned aspiring politician, along with a pair of beige canvas wedgies from K-Mart. Hidden under a layer of dog hair in the drawer below was the pocket organizer notebook I had given her back in January with not one notation inside. There was also a roll of Lifesavers with fuzzy overcoats, a corkscrew and a swizzle stick from the local pub. The girl was obviously ready to party at a moment’s notice.

Another employee was a pack rat for paper goods, I discovered, as I unearthed a collection of grooming show booklets from the last six years as well as every Christmas card she had ever received from customers or fellow workers. She had a pile of menus from local restaurants, some now defunct, and a “Personals” magazine from the days when she was single . . . I think.

I got over feeling superior when I looked inside my own caddy. There I saw a collection of prehistoric grooming tools worthy of the Smithsonian — clippers featuring screw-on blades, dematting devices with injectable razor blades and a huge metal rake resembling something out of a Freddy Krueger movie. There was also a threatening letter from an ex-employee who left on rather bad terms.

I donned my protective mask and dusted away, amazed at all the space I freed up in my cleaning frenzy. My daughter Missi watched from a safe distance, occasionally offering such comments as, “Well, Mom, one of the things about being so disorganized is that you’re always making exciting discoveries.” I blow-dried the dust in her direction for that one.

The next day, I took an informal survey among my staff, asking them to list some things they had lost since they began grooming in this shop.

“My boyfriend,” sighed one groomer. “He got grossed out by a few dog hairs one night when we were getting romantic.”

“My lunch,” answered another. “It was last spring when that Springer Spaniel came in. Remember the one you said should be in the Guinness Book for the largest number of ticks?”

“My illusions about women,” Joey chimed in. “I had no idea of the things they talk about at work! I think I’ve gotten PMS just from hanging around here.”

“My sense of shock,” replied my daughter. “I can’t believe the things people tell me! The other day, a client warned me that her Shih Tzu gets vicious every time its tail is touched since the day she sucked it up with the vacuum cleaner. Then there was the woman who lifted up her dress to ask me if her rash looked like flea bites.”

Sometimes things that went missing were not really lost; they were just misplaced. Take the case of the stool sample a customer asked me to deliver to the animal hospital next door after the vet had left for the day. Since it was stored in a sealed plastic container tucked inside a paper bag, I stuck it in the refrigerator to be delivered on Monday when I came back to work. That thought vanished with a whoosh into the Black Hole inside my brain until a few weeks later when Joey emerged from the break room carrying his soda and the forgotten bag.

“I don’t know whose lunch this is but we should probably throw it out,” he told me. “It smells like it’s spoiled.”

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Kathy Salzberg

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Kathy Salzberg is a lifelong storyteller, (they called it lying back in grade school) author, retired pet groomer and humorist who is enjoying her retirement.