The old man had traveled across nearly every continent on earth. Anyone might’ve called him crazed. I can attest to say that everyone had. He was a crazy old man—a crazy old man who despised traveling. In truth, there weren’t many things he didn’t despise. But there was one little thing he seemed to hate more than anything else in that miserable world of his.

Losing.

He hated losing. Not just items, but everything and anything that possessed the potential to be lost. And he had learned at such a young age what the extent of it could come to. In his innocent adolescents, he had lost many things—people, pets, toys, anything that he held close.

Those were all very dear to him, yes. But there was one specific thing he hated that he had lost the most; it made the most sense out of all his senselessness. Out of everything he chose to hate losing the most, this was something anyone could relate to. It was personal to everyone, indeed, but it wasn’t something that could be held. No, it couldn’t be touched or worn. It was no hat nor watch. It was no forgotten thing he had misplaced long ago—and the old man had misplaced plenty.

Any place he went. Every street he stepped foot on. Every useless pub he stumbled into and person he tried to talk to, couldn’t find his lost thing. Instead, all of them looked on like _he_ was lost. And he was. He was losing his mind. Perhaps that was why he hated himself so much—because he let himself get lost along the way. The world was one big, wild land. It wasn’t unusual for that sort of thing to happen.

“Where, oh, where has the time gone,” he would moan. Nobody knew how to tell him he would never get it back, but some distant part of him always understood.