You’ve kept that old gadget in your garage for years now, but you never use it, so you finally throw it out. The very next day, you discover you need it. Shouldn’t there be a word for needing something you just threw away? Martha reports that over in the A Way with Words discussion forum, listeners came up with, among other things, “premature evacuation.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Premature Evacuation”
Grant, has this ever happened to you?
You’ve thrown away something that you’ve kept for a long time because you finally convinced yourself that you’re never going to use it, and then the very next day, it turns out it’s exactly the thing you need?
Mm—
You know what I’m talking about.
It happened to me recently with a computer cable, and I was just kicking myself.
I felt it had taken up space long enough in my desk drawer, and sure enough, the next day, I needed it.
We know on our discussion forum at waywordradio.org, people have been discussing this phenomenon as well, and they came up with a couple of pretty good terms for it, although I wonder if our listeners have more of them.
One of them was schadenvoid.
Nice, nice.
Kind of sadness about that.
And the other one I kind of liked was premature evacuation.
Well, maybe you have a better suggestion for what we should call the act of throwing something away and then finding out you need it the next day.
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