I love the above term. When my sons were young, I guess in the late seventies, we watched a Cat in the Hat show in which someone lost something. Then the Cat in the Hat came up with a solution.

When you mislaid a certain something

Keep your cool and don’t get hot

Calculatus Eliminatus is the best friend you’ve got

Calculatus Eliminatus always helps an awful lot

You can google the term yourself. I suppose to some degree I am already a little in danger of stealing the Dr. Seuss out take, but I hope I will be forgiven. If you have not heard it or seen it, it would be very good to look it up. Also, as with much of Dr. Seuss, there is some good humor there too.

However, if you like I will try to give you a short version. The concept is that you look someplace. Once you have, that place has been eliminated as a place that something might be. If you look enough places and eliminate them, you will find what you are looking for.

I was recently reminded of the little song being as I lost my checkbook. For three days I looked for it. I was reasonably certain it was in the house. However, there was a time element. Though there was no evidence anyone was misusing it, I decided to stop payment on the checks.

Then, about a month later, I walked in and set my keys on the place next to the head of my bed when something caught my eye. That’s right, there it was, my checkbook right in plain sight. I had put my keys right on top of it apparently a month earlier.

Sometimes, I find things like that the best evidence of space aliens. I mean, otherwise, how could I have overlooked it for a month. One of those gray things must have snuck in and took it. Then later, after examining it, he returned it where I would be sure to see it.

Well, then I thought of the old Cat in the Hat thing, Calculatus Eliminatus. Obviously, that was one place I should have eliminated. It also goes to prove the adage that the best place to hide something is in plain sight. I don’t know. If I hadn’t put my keys there, I might not have ever found it. I almost didn’t see it then. Also, my own observance, there is no one better at hiding something from me than I am.