Old guy was a picture of confusion

It was there just a minute ago.
I swear.
But now where was it?
I knew that I’d come to the office on Monday with my laptop computer and my camera. I remembered having trouble juggling both as I opened the door.
And I knew I’d placed the camera on the dusty, crowded credenza behind my desk after I’d climbed the stairs.
It was there just a minute before. I swear.
But when I needed it Tuesday morning, I couldn’t find it.
Now, I’m a great believer in the old truism that the most logical solution is usually the simplest.
So — on one level at least — I knew that I’d misplaced the camera and had simply forgotten where I had put it.
But as I started looking for it, crazier and far less likely scenarios began to take shape.
Part of the problem was that both Monday and Tuesday had been chaotic.
The newspaper was going through a long overdue upgrade of its newsroom computers and pagination software. The guys from Point, Click and Drag — yes, that’s the name of their company — had arrived on Friday, labored over the weekend, and were still tweaking things when folks arrived for work Monday.
The result was more than a little disruption of the usual routine. The updated pagination software is simpler in some ways and more complicated in others. It’s very similar to what we’ve been used to and very different at the same time. And every little task seemed to have been transformed into a big task as a result.
Having the computer guys here also complicated my process of putting together The News and Sun, our Dunkirk weekly. There was so much going on that I couldn’t seem to find a free computer to allow me to do the work I needed to get done.
Before The News and Sun was finished, I’d worked in front of four different computers at four different locations in the building. (I’d also managed to create a new number in a photo caption. When you hit the shift key at the wrong time, you get $@,000 instead of $2,000. Sorry about that.)
It was in the middle of all this chaos that I noticed my camera had “disappeared.”
So when I wasn’t wandering from computer to computer, I was wandering about the building in search of my camera.
And the problem with a search is that the longer you look, the more frustrated you become. And the more frustrated you become, the more likely you are to jump to nutty conclusions.
Had someone borrowed my camera? Was it mixed up with other cameras in the newsroom? Had I left it in my car? My trunk? Had I actually brought it with me on Monday morning? Could it still be at home?
But after checking in the newsroom, searching my car and the trunk, and going home to look as well, I was still striking out.
Had my camera been stolen? It sounded ridiculous, but I was running out of options.
While our house is nearly always locked, the doors had been open during a remodeling project. Could someone have taken it when no one was looking?
And all weekend, the computer guys had been coming and going at the office. Could someone have wandered into the building and engaged in a little camera-napping?
There was nothing to do but keep looking and repeat my searches.
Every time I wandered through the newsroom on my camera hunt, Ray Cooney scoffed.
“You put it somewhere and forgot it,” he said.
“I put it on the credenza in my office, and it’s not there,” I replied. I’d moved well beyond the logical, simplest answer and was about ready to point the finger at UFOs and aliens.
Between searches, I contacted Steve Arnold at Portland Insurance and learned — as I suspected — that the camera’s value was well below the deductible on my homeowner’s policy.
Besides, camera theft by aliens from outer space probably isn’t covered.
I went home bummed and unsettled by the whole thing.
But I wasn’t the only one having a bad day.
Ray had been up to his ears in the computer switchover and getting the daily newspaper out.
If my day had been irritating, his had been awful.
Maybe that’s why, after I’d gone home and the computer stuff was done for the day, he set out on the sort of calm, logical search that should have happened in the first place.
At 5:20 p.m., I received a text message on my iPhone: “Hello, I am Jack’s camera. I did not get stolen.”
Where was it? In the room with the bound volumes of old newspapers. I’d gone in there on an errand for a friend and had taken my camera with me. Unfortunately, that’s where I left it.
“Let’s all say it loud and clear,” Ray texted. “Ray was right!”
Ray was right, and this old guy was just a little confused.