Without being disparaging to my own sex, I'll admit right now that men have found an awful lot of stuff.
Throughout history, it has been the men who have left the house, navigated stormy seas and climbed treacherous mountains to find things that women didn't even know were lost.
It was men who discovered gunpowder, the Lost City of the Incas and the Straits of Magellan.
It was a man who declared the world was round (a bit of a shock to the flat-earthers, but no surprise to women as they had already figured that out trying to get the washing dry).
Release a man from the confines of a living room and he can be trusted to find the South Pole, the North West Passage and the outline of a woman's breast through three layers of Kevlar.
But never, ever, a set of car keys.
This masculine inability to see things right under their noses is called "man eyes", and is exacerbated by cohabiting with a woman.
With a woman in the house, bachelor possessions lovingly stored in piles on the floor or within the depths of old beer crates are reorganised into drawers, wardrobes and cupboards.
This is what they mean by the feminine mystique: Mata Hari didn't befuddle her victims with narcotics, she simply hid their socks.
Tidiness is incomprehensible to men who, unable to cope, simply bellow, "Where the hell are my pants?!" This outburst causes the woman to come into the room, point to the pants in question, unable to resist saying, witheringly, "Right here, in front of your eyes", before turning on a heel and striding away, reassured of her superiority.
"Why should I have to search for anything?" complains the economist.
"I just expect things to land in my lap.
"After all, you did."
Normally, "man eyes" adjust after a settling-in period, allowing the male to divine the intricacies of handles and doorknobs, but in our house things are slightly more complicated.
Compounding the economist's "man eyes", I have uncontrollable put-away disorder (symptomatic of a terrible need for closure).
This constant neat-freakery sometimes backfires, as I often can't remember where. One dreadful example of this compulsion involved a stack of economics exams waiting to be marked, which I "put away" while clearing all surfaces in preparation for a party.
After tearing the house apart in the days following, it turned out I had put them in the hot water cupboard.
It was touch and go there for a while as it looked like everyone might be getting compensatory A-grades.
The economist told me a joke to cheer me up.
Q: "Why did the Mexican push his wife off a cliff?"
A: "Te-qui-la."
She probably put away his sombrero.
When we have parties I put people's glasses away while they are still drinking out of them.
At my worst, I took the kitchen door off its hinges and put it away in the garage.
It took two weeks for the economist to notice.
"Anything not nailed down, you shift," he says.
But that's not true: nails don't stop me, I've even moved things that were screwed to the wall.
It's not my fault; it's my disease - shifting things around like a poltergeist.
I'm thinking of getting some help, but I've put the phone book somewhere.
Desperate times call for desperate measures.
The economist and I have developed a system to ensure the really important stuff doesn't get moved.
"Would anyone mind," he says, very slowly, with a pointed look in my direction, "if I just put this here?" He then lowers said object using only two fingers, the way CSI's Gary Sinise would his gun, in an I'll-disarm-if-you-do manner.
"Oh darling, don't be silly," I say.
"As if I'd touch your stuff."
Lisa Scott is a Dunedin writer.
The diary
January 23: Deja Vu presents Arabian Nights.
If you missed the first one, don't miss the second.
Until January 31: Pick 'n' Mix, the Art Station.
January 23: Dunedin to Brighton veteran car rally.
A Dunedin tradition since 1954.
January 23-24: Taieri A&P Society show, Mosgiel showground.
January 31: Brighton gala day.
February 24: Tom Jones, Dunedin Town Hall.
It's not unusual, it just looks that way.
February 7: Otago Model Engineering Society exhibition week.
More fun than it sounds.
