inspired by a missing potato

My friend Candice over at The Carolina Housewife wrote a post today about a missing potato. It reminded me of this:

Once upon a time, when I was probably about ten or eleven years old, my family sat at the kitchen table. I was writing/drawing something with a lovely sparkly gold pencil. You know the kind - gold glitter. You only use it when you're a kid because the glitter gets everywhere and it's pretty uncomfortable to hold. But I was a kid, so of course I loved every minute of that gold pencil. Long story short, I dropped that gold pencil as I was doodling, heard it hit the floor, but we couldn't find it. We looked everywhere, but it had vanished. We never saw the pencil again. Ever since that day, when someone in my family can't find something, we say it must be with that pencil.

So, Candice, perhaps your missing potato is wherever that gold pencil of mine vanished to.