“I’m not a complete idiot,” the sign stated. “Some parts are missing.”

The next sign over read: “If I had a dollar for everything I’ve lost… I’d probably lose that too.”

Mankind’s most popular hobby just might be losing things. I had the statistics to confirm that but, um, well, you know…

As the old saying goes, we’re all searching for something — peace, contentment, the other sock in the dryer, the lost shaker of salt…

Screenwriter Neil Gaiman once said, “Nobody gets through life without losing a few things along the way.”

For me, it’s my metabolism. As a teen, I had great metabolism.

At dinner time, I packed away enough mashed potatoes and blueberry cobbler for three people, but still weighed well below 150 pounds and sported a 29-inch waist.

Then when I was about 25, I set my metabolism down — just for a minute — and haven’t seen it since. I believe it’s lost for good. Lost for bad is more like it.

The great philosopher Shawn Spencer said, “I don’t lose things. I place things in locations which later elude me.”

If I didn’t lose things, I’d get far less exercise as I tear through the living room, kitchen, bedroom, car, yard and Dairy Queen (you never know) looking for my car keys, comic book, paycheck, sandwich or other very important thing that had eluded me.

The key (unless it’s a lost key) is to have a place for everything and for everything a specific place — and not to forget where you put the place.

I am very careful about where I place my glasses when I go to bed. I am very near-sighted.

If my glasses get moved, I’m sunk because I can’t see well enough to find them. I end up pawing my way across the carpet, over counters and under chairs, a blind man searching for his lost eyes.

If your cellphone wanders off, you can have your partner punch your number, then follow the ringtone, sort of like Dorothy following the Yellow Brick Road. I need something like that for my glasses.

I wish library books would find that feature. I finally returned a book that was three months overdue. I found it while rooting through my little apartment in search of my watch. It was another couple of weeks before I remembered that I don’t have a watch.

The important thing to remember is that I’m going to forget.

As the old saying goes, of all the things I’ve lot, I miss my mind the most.

Well, not the memories of that horribly humiliating thing that I said in seventh grade. That never gets lost no matter how hard I try.

Native American writer Leslie Marmon Silko said, “What is it about us human beings that we can’t let go of lost things?”

To which I say, “What is it about me that I can’t let go of squeamish memories and let them get lost instead of my notebook from that very important meeting?”

The point is, we all lose things, with the possible exception of weight. That’s the only thing that’s not easy to lose.

Don’t you just wish losing weight was as easy as losing your train of thought? Now where was I?

Oh yeah. I’ve lost car keys, ink pens and phone numbers. I’ve lost socks in the dryer, money in my wallet and my place in the hymnal while leading the whole church in a song. (People give you odd looks when you’re up front belting out Verse Three while everyone else is pelting you back with Verse Two. Nope, my mind won’t lose that memory either.)

One of my favorite T-shirts — I don’t know where it is — states: “I’m lost. I’ve gone to find myself. If I should return before I get back, ask me to wait.”

Things — if it’s something we can have, you can be sure it’s something we will lose. As another T-shirt writer said, “If all is not lost, where is it?”

Find Burt at burton.w.cole@gmail.com — if he hasn’t misplaced his computer again.