Contributor: The Nerd
My wife is one of the smartest people I know. Despite this, she has a 30-year history of (a) throwing away valuable things by accident and (b) putting valuable things where they can't be found. I've retrieved an expensive pair of sunglasses from a trash bag. A few years ago I was forced to buy a remote for a two-month-old TV because, as we discovered eight months later, she had taken the remote upstairs and unintentionally hidden it in the laundry room.
Eighteen months ago we bought a new car that came with two key fobs. The two of us might drive either of our two cars depending on where we’re headed or how many people are going with us. With key fobs headed in two directions and given her sordid history, I periodically check our key rack to make sure we haven’t misplaced a key fob.
Last April I discovered that we only had one fob for our newest car. As I’ve done dozens of times in the last decade, I declared a ‘key search’ which required each of us to go through coats, sweatshirts, pant pockets, purses, etc. to find the key. That didn’t yield results, so I expanded the search to cars, furniture crevices and closet floors. Still nothing. It seemed likely that the fob had either fallen out of my pocket at a track meet or was tossed in the trash by my distracted wife. Since my phone also worked (albeit unreliably) as a key, we decided to wait a few months to see if the key would reappear.
In early December I received a recall notice for my car that required a weeklong stay at the dealership. Since it was there so long, I asked my wife if I should order a new fob. She responded: “Order if you want. I wouldn’t. It might still show up.” By then I was pretty sure I was to blame for losing it at a track meet, so I ordered a new one. It took three weeks to arrive. I picked it up on December 31st, taking a $500 hit.
On January 8th I was in a rush to make it to the office for an early meeting. I opened our locker to grab a car key. The first one I grabbed didn’t have a house key on it, so I figured it was the fob I had just bought. I put it back and grabbed the other fob. It also didn’t have a house key on it. I yelled to my wife in the dining room: “Why did you take the house key off my key fob?”
She appeared in the kitchen, smiling sheepishly. “Oh, I wondered about that. I guess I found the missing fob.”
I checked my coat pocket. Sure enough, I had a third fob with a house key in my pocket. We now had three fobs for the car.
“You found the missing fob? Where was it?”
She smiled her cute smile. “Oh, it was in my January purse.”
I cocked my head in disbelief. “Your January purse? What the heck is a January purse?”
She gave me an even bigger smile. “It’s the purse I use in January. It’s light blue. It reminds of me of snow.”
“So when we both said that we had checked all of our coats, sweatshirts, pants, purses, furniture and cars, that didn’t include the January purse?”
“I didn’t say I looked in all of my purses.”
“You did say that.”
“Whatever. It’s your fault for wasting $500 on a new fob. I told you not to buy it.”
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I never had a sister so I initially assumed that ‘January purses’ are one of those female secrets that men eventually stumble upon if we live long enough. However, after telling this story to friends and coworkers, it appears that the purse-by-the-month approach is a rare practice observed by women who are either very rich (not my wife) or buy a lot of cheap purses at Goodwill (definitely my wife).
I’ll laugh about this expensive and hilarious interaction for years, and it’s made me think about other valuables that we consciously or unconsciously hide from ourselves. That question is particularly relevant this week with the start of the Nebraska high school track season.
Like many of the athletes we cover, I have ambitious running goals for this year. Four years ago I was told by an orthopedic surgeon that my running career was over. Despite that, I ran a respectable marathon last June. That race has me wondering whether qualifying for Boston as a 60-year-old – a huge challenge that would easily be my most meaningful running accomplishment – is within reach. To do so, I’ll need to conquer not only my bad knee but also something that has eluded me since high school: pushing through discomfort during training or a race. I'll need healthy doses of resilience and motivation to reach my goal, and I wonder if I’ve got those in a January purse that is finally ready to be opened.
Across the state, kids are coming home from their first official practices, and more than a few freshmen are already wondering whether this track thing is worth the effort. Sure, a lot of their friends are on the team, but surely those kids are more talented or are in easier events. The bad thoughts begin creeping in: “Why I am trying this sport that I’m probably not going to be very good at?”
Don't give up.
Just keep running. Keep playing the clarinet. Join the speech team. Stay in 4H or ROTC or the academic decathlon. You’ve got gangly limbs, baby fat, a cracking voice and all the other things that are part of being a teenager, and this is exactly where you’re supposed to be. Keep doing everything as well as you can and - eventually - you’ll find the talents and loves that have been hidden in your January purse. If you’re lucky, you’ll keep finding new joys for the rest of your life.
I hope I run into you at a track meet this season. I can’t wait to see the talents you’ve discovered.
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First published at www.preprunningnerd.com by Jay Slagle on March 3, 2025. If you find an error, shoot us an e-mail at jayslagle@hotmail.com and we'll get it fixed.
Like this coverage of the Nebraska T&F and XC scene? There's more of this at www.preprunningnerd.com. Check out the Blog tab for our frequent stories and the Results tab for every Nebraska high school meet we can find. If you want to see meet photos or just need to kill a few hours on social media, follow us on Twitter and Instagram @PrepRunningNerd or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/preprunningnerd.
Finally, if you think runners, jumpers and throwers are the best things on earth, you'll enjoy our two most popular articles. In 2018 we published "The Runner with the Broken Heart" about a high school boy who finished last in nearly every race he ran. In 2022 we published, "The Fall and Rise of Emmett Hassenstab," a story about a high school triple jumper who became a quadrapalegic after a swimming accident.