It’s amazing how little time it takes for some of the strangest things to accumulate in closets, drawers and cupboards, and for others to dissappear completely.

No, seriously, think about it.

I remember when I was in third grade and my family was packing to move. My mother complained about the amount of stuff that had accumulated over our years of living in that house.

We discovered while packing that we didn’t have even the slightest clue where some of the things uncovered had come from or even when they had arrived.

Just a few of life’s many mysteries, I guess.

Now, as the end of the semester draws near, the time to take the annual inventory of what is and what isn’t left is here.

This is the time to discover the things that you do have but you didn’t know you had and the things that you don’t have but you thought you had.

Time to finally learn that your favorite outfit has been living in one of your roommate’s closets or that the missing piece to your cookware set was adopted by your neighbors to take leftovers home in after a barbeque last fall and now houses the apartment fish.

Some of the elusive items missing from my closets and cupboards have been that way for a while, and I am not going to hold my breath waiting for them to reappear. One minute they are there and the next minute they have faded out of existence and into some unlocatable void in closet land.

In fact, there is a blouse in my closet that, if I didn’t know better, I would swear had copied a set of my keys so it could come and go at its leisure.

Even more mind-boggling, however, is trying to figure out the rationale behind the acquisition of some of the items I’ve found in my kitchen cupboards since beginning to take the end-of-the-year inventory. And until reading a small blurb in the Chicago Tribune, I have been at a loss to find out whatever had possesed me to buy some of those things.

The article titled “TV can be fattening” was reporting a study conducted by Brigham Young University which reported that men who watched TV between one and two hours a day had a 60 percent increased chance of being obese.

Now what does this have to do with figuring out how so many strange items made their way from the shelves of Pick N‘ Save into my shopping basket and onto the shelves of my kitchen cupboard?

The answer is simple and I, myself, should have figured it out sooner.

The basis for reasoning behind both the study and the mystery of my kitchen cupboards is “because television viewers are bombarded by thousands of messages for non-nutritious foods via advertisements and prime-time programs, and because television viewing correlates with snacking and consumption of food advertised on television,” said Dr. Larry A. Tucker.

So that’s what happened.

On the rare occasions when I was able to watch some TV, these darn commercials were planting tiny messages in my mind about their products.

Then the next time I happened to be merrily pushing my shopping cart down the aisle, a little voice inside my head would say, “Hey, doesn’t that box of new and improved Tuna-Burger Surprise look good? Let’s give that a try.” A few aisles later, the voice would return: “Don’t forget to stock up Fruitful Gelatin Treats.” And when I finally made my way to the checkout counter, my basket was full of subliminally-influenced purchases.

The end result?

I could stop watching TV late at night in order to control my uncontrollable grocery shopping urges. Or I can continue at the end of every year to open my kitchen cupboard door and peer into the dark abyss wondering … gee, if I don’t know where that box of Jelle Bear Cereal came from, I can’t imagine what will be found lurking in the back of the refrigerator.