OK, Einstein, where’d I put my pen?

We are fast approaching the 100th anniversary of Albert Einstein's theory of relativity; it happens next year.

So how come Mr. Genius never bothered to explain the deepest physics mystery of all: Where does the pen by the phone go?

Al could not have been unaware of this problem. You take a message. You hang up the phone. You get a snack. The phone rings. You come back. And ... No pen!

I asked a consortium of physicists and one professional organizer to explain:

Why does stuff just disappear? And just as mysteriously: Why does some of the stuff, particularly the toothpaste, suddenly reappear after you have either forgotten all about it or spent many, many, MANY hours hunting for it right where it suddenly reappears?! Explain this!

'Einstein proposed that mass distorts space-time like a bowling ball distorts the surface of a mattress,” said Daniel Koon, a professor of physics at St. Lawrence University, thinking he was being helpful. (Think again!)

This bowling ball creates a black hole. It's 'like a newly formed blob in a lava lamp,” said Koon. And this blob swallows pens. Or something. On second thought, maybe I shouldn't have started with the physicists.

But I did, and another one - Lawrence Brehm at the State University of New York at Potsdam - said black holes are not to blame. It's the entropy, stupid!

'There is usually enough random energy around to create disorder” -- i.e., entropy. 'This random energy can be a breeze or a vibration, but often it takes the form of a child, spouse or pet.”

Aha! So then it is my husband who is always walking off with the pen, right?

Well, not according to Donald Ware, former director of the International UFO Congress who also holds a graduate degree in physics, and he says that 'advanced aliens” hang around, moving objects through 'what some call telekinesis” to 'expand the awareness of the individual involved.”

Lisa Zaslow, founder and CEO of Gotham Organizers, shakes her head. The problem is that we don't pay enough attention to where we put stuff, she says.

Yeah. Like that really makes sense. Lisa, I pay constant attention to my stuff and, in fact, have just found my phone pen, so there! The only remaining physics mystery is this: How'd it get into my underwear drawer?