Gone Missing

By Patricia Smiley

Lately things have gone missing.

Like digital photos…

Last Tuesday I spoke at the Rancho Park-Palms Library with Harley Jane Kozak. We shared a lot of laughs with a great group of mystery fans using a blend of information sharing and dog-and-pony show. The fabulous Maggie and Susan represented the library and our beloved Bobby from The Mystery Bookstore sold books.

I brought along my camera to capture the event for posterity. Tragically, the pictures went missing. Disappeared inside the computer, never to be found again.

On Saturday I realized that the nineties were missing, too…

The deadline for my third book is looming large. In the weeks before I turn in a manuscript I become obsessive, so for the past few weeks I’ve been writing like a mad woman, polishing, revising, and tweaking my prose.

I often write late at night at which time the gerbil on the wheel in my brain refuses to stop running even when my body says enough already. When this happens, I can’t sleep and random thoughts pop into my head. Brilliant thoughts. Useless thoughts. Funny thoughts. I always think I’ll remember the brilliant ones but I seldom do, so I’ve trained myself to write everything down on a tablet that I keep beside my bed. I have to admit that when I read my notes the next day, a large percentage of them lean toward useless, but occasionally one surprises me.

Saturday night the gerbil was working overtime. Brilliant, useless, funny thoughts were all swirling together in the vortex inside my head. Quite suddenly one muscled its way out of the pack and screamed, “Remember the 1990s?”

Huh? Actually, I didn’t. Prior decades were there, the early school years, high school, college, graduate school, the torrid love affairs of my twenties, the crappy jobs, turning twenty-six and feeling that the best part of life had passed me by. Events from 2000 on were pretty clear. But my 90s database was empty. I mean, nothing. Zip. Nada. A whole decade. Gone missing without a trace. I felt like Jason Bourne waking up one morning and finding that huge chunks of his past had disappeared.

Then I began to wonder. Does anybody remember the 90s? If you do, please clue me in. What happened and was I there?