Despair Over Lost Clothes Is Easy to Find

No one could blame the neighbors for listening.

There was an interrogation going on in an upstairs bedroom, followed by a series of screeches and stomping. That, the neighbors would reason, could mean only one thing.

The nice-looking family next door was involved in some devious spy ring.

“Where is it?” came the woman’s high-pitched voice, obviously intent on locating the microfilm.

“I don’t know,” answered the smallish voice in a half-wail.

“You have to know!” the interrogator bellowed. “You had it yesterday!”

“Someone must have taken it!” the smallish voice said.

“You do know what this means, don’t you?” the interrogator asked ominously.

Any neighbor with an ear pressed to the wall would have gasped in anticipation. What did it mean?

Was she going to insert matchsticks between the hapless person’s toes? Put toothpicks under his fingernails? Use that dreadful water torture technique?

No. Something far worse.

“It means you’re going to march right over to the school and look for it!” the interrogator said finally. “And if you don’t find it, it also means your allowance is going to be withheld for the next two years.

“Because that’s how much it cost!”

*

The it , of course, had nothing to do with microfilm. It was something far more precious around my household and usually a lot harder to locate: My kids’ clothes.

That beautiful, expensive jacket my son got for his birthday? Gone.

Those fluffy sweat shirts the kids begged me to buy? Gone.

The left shoe of the pump-up high-tops I swore I’d never shell out $40 for, but did anyway? Gone.

And to where do they all disappear? To the same place every other piece of kids’ clothes often ends up: A cardboard box in a school cafeteria or laid out on a table in the school auditorium.

“You can see the frustration on the parents’ faces when they come to look through everything,” said George Coyle, principal of Banyan Elementary School in Fillmore. “Sometimes they say they don’t have anything left at home.”

At Banyan, Coyle said, found clothes are put in a corner of the cafeteria. Then, once a month, they’re all placed on a table in front of the school so parents can see them when they come to pick up their kids.

And naturally, all of the clothes eventually get reclaimed, right?

Uh, not exactly.

“We have quite a lot that never get picked up,” Coyle said, echoing the situation at numerous other schools with bulging lost-and-found departments. “We’ll have several trash bags full, a lot of times with really nice things.

“We donate it all to charities in the community.”

That can kind of take the wind out of a parent’s sails. After all, it certainly wouldn’t be fitting to begrudge a charity our child’s expensive, beautiful clothes, would it? Or to think that, at this rate, pretty soon our own child may be in need of some charity clothes?

No, short of roping the clothes to the child’s body, it’s clearly just one of those things parents have to get used to.

That is, unless they happen to shop at a particular store in Simi Valley.

And then they might get to buy the clothes back.

*

As a foster parent to 35 children over the last few years, Nancy Jones was no stranger to the black hole into which children’s clothes disappear. But then she decided to capitalize on it.

A little over a year ago, Jones opened up Second Time Around, a consignment store on Los Angeles Avenue in Simi Valley. She then contacted several schools around town and asked them about their overflowing boxes of unclaimed clothes.

Instead of donating them to charity, she suggested, why not sell them on consignment and receive a portion of the sales price? The idea, she said, caught on.

“The schools benefit and my store benefits,” she said. “The consignments pour in here now.”

Sure enough, there are some good deals to be found: Coats in near perfect condition for $10. Brand-new turtlenecks for $1.95. Pants (yes, they lose those, too) for $2.

And then there’s the real find: an article that’s the spitting image the one junior left on the playground.

“I had a mother come in with her son not long ago and she said, ‘Oh look! This looks just like the coat you lost,’ ” Jones said. “Then she said, ‘And look! It even has an ink spot in the same place yours did!’ ”

Jones laughed. “I just said to her, ‘Uh, maybe you’d better take a closer look.’ ”

So if your kid happens to lose the beautiful new coat, sweater or shirt you got him or her for Christmas, don’t forget to check the box in the cafeteria.

And if it’s not there, don’t despair. Maybe you can buy it back.

If you’re lucky, you might get a really good deal.