inexplicable rearrangements of objects

For the longest time it seemed like one of my shoes was missing this morning, which was completely inexplicable. Eventually I found it in a place not worth explaining, but for awhile the only explanation I could think of is that someone was playing some sort of deliberate prank.

I used to know someone about 10 years older than I am, who had been a severe alcoholic earlier in his life. In his worse states he would sometimes do minor things just to completely mess with people’s minds. For example, he claims he once broke into a house to do nothing more than replace half of the beer cans in one of their 6-packs in the refrigerator with a completely different brand of beer, then leave.

Some years later he joined Alcoholics Anonymous, and apparently there you are asked to apologize to anyone you’ve harmed due to drinking in the past. So he actually tracked down the guy whom he had pranked and apologized. The guy remembered the incident clearly and said it had been really confusing, but otherwise said “no problem, apology accepted.”

Anyway, I was wondering for a long time if it was something like that. But through a freak of physics the shoe had simply gotten wrapped up in one of the blankets and raised invisibly above the floor. But until then I was imagining a drunk prankster with a key card on the hotel staff.