The Federal Case of the Missing Memory Stick

Why it's best to avoid being in need of assistance in a Japanese workplace

Before I leave home for work, I fill my pockets (pants and jacket) with the essentials: my wallet, keys, cellphone, some change, and my USB memory stick.

On this stick, I have all of my lesson plans and other materials I use for teaching. I also keep notes or essays/stories I've begun but lost the incentive to complete for whatever reason. Occasionally I'll review them to see if they merit completion. Sometimes they do. Sometimes only part of it does, and the rest of it is for shit. Sometimes, the whole thing is better left in limbo. I back the stick up periodically, syncing it with my PC at home and the PCs at both my schools (since they restrict personal internet usage), but not as regularly as I should.

Friday, however, I ran into a snag. My memory stick was MIA.

This happens occasionally, and I usually find it the next day strangely right in the place where it ought to have been during the initial search like some poltergeist is fucking with me. I strip-searched my room for a solid ten minutes. That was all the time I had, though. I had a bus to catch, and if I missed it, I'd have to run to get to work on time. And I hate to run to work. It's like running to the dentist so as not to be late for a compacted wisdom tooth extraction.

The search produced nothing except that lighter I'd been looking for off and on for a week.

And I had lessons to plan. I tried to recall when was the last time I'd backed it up. Two months? Last semester? Ever? Shit! It had been a minute.

I wondered if I'd left the stick at the office. I had used it the previous day to make some lessons, so there was an off-chance that's what happened. I'm usually pretty careful with that, though, because some of my writing is not exactly the kind of stuff my co-workers would get all warm and fuzzy and "Sugoi" (wow, this is wonderful!) over. Quite the contrary.

And I presume nothing about any of them anymore. Especially as it pertains to who knows English and who doesn't. I've been thrown for a loop by a co-worker suddenly breaking into English better than the English teacher enough times to know that you just never fucking know. They are all professional educators, meaning they are all schooled and some very well schooled.

But I wasn't worried. I was just a little concerned.

When I arrived at the school at 8:15, 15 minutes before the morning meeting was to begin, I had some time, so I gave the computer area I had worked in the day before what I thought was an inconspicuous once-over.

It wasn't inconspicuous enough, though.

"Lose something?" It was the computer tech teacher, Ozawa-sensei. He had been watching me as I casually glanced behind the PC's monitor. I felt like an Espionage School reject.

"Ummm...kinda. I think I might have left my memory stick here on Friday..." I said in Japanese. He knows no English (as far as I know).

"Doko? Koko?" (Where? Here?)

Uh oh!

I heard it in his voice—the urgency. I'd seen this phenomenon before. A federal case in the making. But now it was done, and I just had to ride it out.

As Ozawa sensei got down on his hands and knees and practically crawled under the computer desk, I cursed myself for saying anything about the stick.

"Maybe it fell under here..." I heard his voice suggest, slightly muffled through the hypoallergenic mask he always wears.

"Please, no, it's not necessary for you to..." I said when he popped up from under the desk with dust balls in his hair and suit and a memory stick in his hand. It was one of those grey memory sticks that teachers have in abundant supply in the supply cabinet.

"Atta! Kore ha?" (Found it! Is this it?)

"Chigau desu ne. Boku no stiiku ga kuroi desu." (My stick is black.)

"Kuroi ka? (Black eh?)

Yoshida sensei must have spied what was going on and came over to offer her assistance. Any time I speak to a teacher other than an English teacher, she feels the need to come over and translate everything being said...she's just being nice, I know, but it really gets annoying sometimes...especially when I understand what the other person is saying.

Moreover, it sends a message to the other teachers that speaking to me is something that could be done with fewer instances of confusion if she is present. It handicaps me in the eyes of others. I guess in the same way a blind person who has no love for dogs feels having to smell a seeing-eye dog's ass all day.

I've told her she didn't need to do that all the time, but I bet that blind man probably tells his dog to stop farting, too. It's not like I told her she needn't be kind to people, but she'd responded like I had. So, I just let it go. And she just keeps doing it.

Ozawa sensei welcomed her assistance.

"Ah, good morning, Yoshida sensei! We have a problem here, it seems. Baye-Sensei was a bit careless with his USB and may have forgotten it in this area yesterday when he left the office..." Ozawa said.

"Oh, I see!" she said to Ozawa. Then she said to me, "Did you, um, misplace your USB stick?"

I looked at the two of them for a hot moment before surrendering to what I'd learned I had no way of stopping, short of going postal.

"I might have," I said. "It's a possibility."

She smiled that eerie plastic nervous "please don't kill me" smile of hers and turned to Ozawa, who was waiting, a little impatiently, for the translation. It was almost meeting time after all.

"He says maybe he did, but he's not sure."

"I see," Ozawa said thoughtfully. "Well, I'll mention it in the morning meeting and see if any of the other teachers have seen it..."

Oh God, no!

But, this train was leaving the station. The chime was chiming, and the teachers were standing.

The principal and the vice principal were at the front desk watching the three of us at the computer station. We all hustled to our respective seats. A moment of silence passed before the vice principal said, "Ohayou gozaimasu!"

And everyone bowed and replied almost in unison,"Ohayou gozaimasu," and took our seats.

The morning meeting is a pretty formal affair. It includes a brief discussion of all the issues of the day that affect all teachers. Then, the meeting breaks up into three meetings: one for each grade: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd-year teachers. The scheduler opens the general meeting by making all the announcements. Then, he opens the floor to remarks or announcements from anyone who cares to make any.

I sat there, hoping he wouldn't say anything, but when I heard the scheduler say, "Hoka wa?" (Are there any others?) and Ozawa says, "Hai!" I just closed my eyes.

"Baye Sensei has misplaced his memory stick. He was using it in the computer area yesterday. It is not a standard USB used by the teachers. It is his own personal USB, and it's black. Does anyone have any information as to its whereabouts?"

I plastered a smile on my face, lifted my head, and looked around at all the worried faces looking at me. No one had seen it.

"Well, if anyone should come across it, please forward it to Baye-sensei. He is a little distressed over it, so please, let's help him out, shall we? That's all I have."

Some other teachers spoke but I wasn't listening anymore. When the meeting ended a couple teachers stopped by my desk.

"I'm so sorry to hear about your memory stick Baye-Sensei...I hope you find it."

"Thank you, Suzuki sensei. Thank you so much," I replied with the appropriate amount of appreciation and concern on my face. At least, I think I did. I just tried to make the face I see people make in this situation. A situation where you are responsible for causing people to break with the routine of their lives to do something for your benefit.

Some teachers saw this as an opportunity to show how much they really liked me but were too afraid to say so over the past three years of working in the same building as me. Teachers who hadn't really said anything but the most compulsory stuff were now espousing words of encouragement.

"Keep your head up, Baye-sensei," said Sakura sensei. I actually thought she was a little off or something. She works with the Special Ed kids and sits at her desk mumbling to herself, so I thought the Japanese had gotten really progressive and started hiring under the guidelines of 'it takes one to know one.'’ Or, in this case, to teach a dozen.

"It'll surface...they always do. Don't worry!" cried Yamate-sensei through a mask of pain.

This went on all day.

When I got home, what do you know? There it was, right on my desk next to my computer, where I always keep it.

Fucking poltergeist, I swear!