So, I had a sad experience over the weekend.

I lost my teeth.

Oh, sure, it's not the kind of thing that happens to everybody, I'll grant you that.  Why, I can imagine some people go their whole lives without ever losing their teeth.  But, yes, I lost my teeth over the weekend, and this is my story.

It's a real expensive dental triple-crown.  The back two crowns are fused together, then there's this tricky little tongue-and-groove (no pun intended!) slide mechanism between them and the first crown, so the natural jaw motion won't break them apart.  I've had it for about ten years.  It's cemented into my jaw, but it breaks out about every few years.  It broke out about a month ago.

My dentist is a couple of hours away, so I usually stay overnight at my parents' house, then return the next day.  My appointment is in a couple of days.  Last Saturday morning it occurred to me I'd better make sure I put the triple-crown someplace where I'll remember it.  Or, better yet, put it in the overnight suitcase, just to make sure I brought it.

I glance around for the two pieces of the crown.  They're not where I remembered seeing them last, on the edge of a table.  Perhaps they fell on the floor?  Nope, not there.  I haven't vacuumed lately, and my vacuum wouldn't pick them up, anyways.  They're porcelain -covered gold and fairly heavy.

I tear the room apart.

Then I tear it apart again, bright flashlight in hand.  I look on every shelf and table.  I look in every nook and cranny.  I don't even know what a cranny is, but I look there, anyway.

Also, I'm the only person who's been in this room over the past month, so it had to have been something I did with them, no one else.  That much was obvious.
I tear apart the rest of the house.  I check out all the 'clever' places I could have put them, like the floppy disk rack, or the cup next to the bathroom faucet.  They are nowhere to be found.

In a blinding flash of inspiration, I realize that I must have already made sure I brought them, but had just forgotten.  They must be in the glove compartment of the car!  How clever!

Nope.

And then, totally out of places to look, I realize what must have happened.  And this is where the story takes a sad turn, friends, and why this, ultimately, is a warning to you to be careful, should you ever have a two-piece $3000 crown lying around.  Or two gold nuggets, for that matter.

I accidentally threw them away.

I suddenly remembered that I was looking at them one night, about three weeks before, and had set them down on the edge of the computer bench.

And I occasionally have a can of nuts around, and sometimes a few bad ones end up on the computer bench.  The crown pieces are about the same size as the nuts, and while they're made of gold, they have porcelain finishes and are roughly the same color as nuts.  I must have been cleaning up one day without my glasses on, bottle of cleaner in one hand, wad of paper towels in the other, blasted the computer bench and wiped everything away; nuts, dust, $3000 crown and all.

And that's pretty much the end of the story.

Well, except for one small thought I had later on.

Late that night I was puzzling over the mystery, and it was then that I realized the flaw in my logic.

I wasn't the only person in the room over the past month.

Or, more specifically, I wasn't the only living entity in the room over the past month that had access to the computer bench where the crown had last been seen.

You guessed it.

See, I occasionally let Mathilda play around on the computer bench because she's not a wire-biter.

I stood up, moved the keyboard out of the way, pushed the tower to the side, pulled the monitor forwards, and there, behind the monitor, amidst all the jumble of wires and dust, in a tiny, neat little pile, were four extremely valuable items:

1.  half of a potato chip

2.  a Vitakraft yogurt-flavored gum drop

3.  one half of the crown

4.  the other half

The crown hadn't been lost.  It had been stolen.