My best bra went missing. I searched everywhere in my room in case the bra got put away with another item of clothing. I searched behind the washer and dryer in case the bra flung out of the large appliance and jumped behind it in a feat of disappearing genius. I searched the children’s rooms and the dog beds. I looked every reasonable and unreasonable place it could possibly have been hidden. There was no sign of the bra.

I remembered the last time that I wore it. I remembered putting it in the dirty laundry basket and deliberately putting it in the washer with the very next load. That’s where the trail went cold. The bra vanished. Every day this week, I sat in the living room for an hour, folding clothes and separating them into baskets for each person to claim. Still, no bra.

Finally, I gave up hope. The bra was gone. I dejectedly made a mental note to waste a day trying on new bras the next day I had available. That would be some time in the fall.

This morning, I put on my second choice bra aka almost the same style as the missing bra, but in the wrong color for my entire wardrobe. SuperTween wandered in the room. “You haven’t seen my black bra anywhere, have you?”

“Ohhh, yeah. It was on top of a basket of laundry you had folded and I didn’t want *anyone to see it, so I put it in the back of the black shelf.”

*Anyone would be an elementary or middle school age friend of my children, because they are the only visitors we get. Clearly, we can’t allow children or tweens to be traumatized by the sight of a clean, folded bra on a pile of clean, folded shirts and pants. None of those visiting children have adult female relatives who are occasionally seen folding laundry in their home. It’s perfectly okay to announce exactly what you are going to do in the bathroom as you run out of the living room. There’s nothing wrong with wandering the house naked because your pajamas were itchy and you need mom to wash the fuzzy jammies that you like. It’s fine to open the door and bring your friends in the bathroom regardless of what mom is doing in there, but bras are so very, very embarrassing.

At least I found the missing bra.