Troper was playing around with a flash drive that she had put some photos and a note-letter-type-thing to her best friend/Heterosexual Life Partner twirling it around on my index finger... it had a little chain thing hanging off it with a ring-type-thingy on the end. The ring-type-thingy is apparently used to hook it onto things.. Flash drive flew off my finger and I could not for the life of me see where the hell it landed. Flash forward to today and my mother finds the flash drive... ON THE CHAIR IN FRONT OF MY DAD'S COMPUTER. I was ''this close'' to bashing my head against the table. Repeatedly. Probably until I would've cracked my head open or something.

This troper's sister. Her vision was apparently based on movement. Troper was sitting in a chair absolutely motionless (she was reading) when her sister walked over to the chair looking for something on the desk, still not seeing troper, until she said, "Hey.". The ''neighbors'' heard the scream.

This troper once used the bathroom at a movie theater and actually sat behind someone for about a minute before she turned around and glared at me... The worst part is that I said "eh, no urinals.. that's odd." to myself before she did. As Flock of Seagulls said "I ran, I ran so far away."

Many tropers report failing spot checks for items such as glasses, pencils, remote controls, wallets, and keys. Common locations for them include: wearing them, behind the ear, in their hand, pocket, sitting on the table, in the back of the fridge (for milk), and in the sofa. This has gotten to the point that some tropers simply stop looking for the item, because it will show up better that way.

Often {{justified}} in the case of glasses since, well, if you need glasses you obviously can't see very well without them.

This guy is ashamed to admit that he actually set about patting his pockets in search of his cell phone, since he always keeps it in one particular pocket. He was, at that point, actually speaking to someone on said cell phone.

On the subject of patting pockets, this troper will pat them when searching for something, even something which couldn't possibly be there like the remote control.

This troper always starts by searching his pockets, and then the pockets of the pants he wore yesterday. Justified, however, since I habitually wear cargo pants. Even worse in the winter, when the cargo pants and the hoodie together make eight pockets, minimum.

This troper, whenever he is looking for something, will always instinctively begin by looking for it... on his right arm, just below the wrist, where he usually keeps his watch.

This troper, who needs his glasses to see more than a foot but has to take them off to read, tends to push them up onto his forehead when they're momentarily not needed, and has forgotten that they were there more than he'd care to admit.

This Troper once was holding his Nintendo DS's touch screen pen to type, and then forgot he had it. He was holding it with his mouth.

This Troper once searched frantically for an NES cartridge that he wanted to borrow... only to find it ''in his hand''.

Ditto for this troper, but with his ''cell phone''.

This Troper's dad once admitted to searching all through the house for his glasses, before realizing he was ''wearing'' them.

This Troper has done that. Now, any time he's looking for his glasses, the first thing he'll do is FacePalm to make sure they're not on his face. It's not like I need them for short distances, or even long distances if I don't necessarily need to make out fine details...

This troper often does the exact same thing. Never once does it occur to him that he's seeing awfully well for someone who needs his glasses to see more than a few inches...

This troper frequently panics, thinking she has lost her glasses, only to realise she's actually wearing them when someone points this out.

This troper is notorious for this. She remembers just last night searching high and low for one of her four USB drives, only to find it--and all four of them--in her bra.

This troper was driving home from work one day when his phone rang. He reached in to send the call to voicemail... and panicked, because his keys weren't in his pocket.

This Troper once looked all over for her flipflops, then had her Dad help help her look. They were in the the middle of the floor in plain sight.

This troper recently witnessed a fellow employee of his job as where his phone was, while checking FaceBook on his iPhone.

This troper once spent fifteen minutes looking for a pair of scissors that was in her hand, and once went looking for her cell phone while she was ''on it'', talking to her father, who just laughed at her.

This Troper believes he holds the record for pencils misplaced behind the ear: three at one time. He was adding a fourth (stacked on top of the second) when he realized why his head felt funny...

This troper once her iPod, when it was...in her hand.

I once spent an hour looking for my earphones...later, I realized they had been safely in my pocket, sitting there and mocking me while I tore down the house.

This Troper often checks his pockets when he's out to make sure he has everything. On more than one occasion he has freaked out because his headphones were missing, only to notice, ten or so seconds later, that he was using them.

This Troper had turned the house upside down, searching for her DS, I then ran to my Mother, only then I figured it out I was holding after acknowledging the fact it was in my hand during my explanation to her.

I tamper with other people's spot checks. I'm functionally invisible, intangible, and nonexistent. Until I force them to notice me.

This troper once got into someone else's car (identical and both unlocked). The "wrong" car was equipped with an automatic transmission, and this troper wondered for a second why his clutch pedal was missing...

This troper has forgotten where he left his house keys -- they were in the OTHER pocket.

Oh good lord... this troper does this all the damned time. Just the other day this troper was looking for the post office so that he could buy a book of stamps (this troper had moved into the town in question several years ago and doesn't get out nearly as often as he should, apparently), and passed right by the big orange brick building (three guesses and the first two don't count what it was) along the main drag trying to find it. This troper at least got some good exercise walking along town, but had to ask the lady at the store where the hell it was -- over by the credit union. Let's just say this troper did a faceslap upon finally finding it. One of my many "where is my brain today?" moments, to say the very least.

Happens to this Troper so often that he has a CatchPhrase for it -- "If it were a snake..." (the old saying finishes, "it would have bitten me.") I don't even bother with the second clause.

My grandfather uses this phrase. Yes, I frequently fail spot checks, including the time I failed to notice that I was sitting on the checkbook my mother was frantically rummaging through the car for.

This troper was driving a bus to school, but accidentally left one bus stop earlier than necessary. Upon realizing this, he waited at the bus stop for 15 minutes for a bus that would take him further... and never realized that the bus stop he was waiting at was right opposite his school, and that he was staring straight at his school for 15 minutes without realizing. Instead of waiting 15 minutes, he could just walk across the street to get there.

This troper's mother can't find anything that goes into her purse. The troper however, can almost instantly find it, usually her keys. It got to the point where she wouldn't even look and would just hand the purse over.

This troper once stepped out onto a patio, closed the screen door, went to go back in, wondered if he forgot something, decided he didn't, and walked back in.... right through the still-closed screen door.

This troper's mother once couldn't find her sunglasses. She looked everywhere before this troper said "Mom, they're on your head." This troper hasn't let her live it down since (not that said troper doesn't fail spot checks regularly as well).

This troper's mother once walked four miles to pick up this troper from school because she (the mother) had lost her car keys. As soon as she met this troper in front of the school, she found the keys in her pocket. And yes, this troper had to be escorted home. Let's not even go there.

This troper spent fifteen minutes frantically searching for a pencil before he looked down and realized he was ''holding one.''

This troper and his family so frequently fail to find objects in plain sight ("Don't put it where it won't get lost, or else it will!") that we've resorted to putting important things in really out-of-the-way places. Perhaps justified in that we think about where we're putting them (sometimes pretty hard), so the location comes to mind.

This troper tends to fail spot checks on large things, like traffic. This has resulted in slamming into cars twice, and walking smack into a slow-moving bus once.

This troper has deleted more missed calls from his girlfriend than he cares to admit off his cellphone. Those are the ones made from six inches away when he's tangled it in the blankets. Or when it's within arm's reach but not in his line of sight.

This troper refers to such events as 'Idiot Moments'

This troper has walked into things right in front of him; walked into the wrong room and sat down for five minutes before realizing; fallen ''down the stairs'' because he missed seeing a step... In fact, one of the most common things he's been known to do when he notices something in somebody's house he hasn't noticed before is say "How long has that been there?" to which his friends will reply "Dude, like, three months." Not to mention he has a bad habit of forgetting where he put things ten seconds after he put them there. In a startling subversion, though, he has a keen eye for find really small, trivial things like tiny magnets on the floor at Wal-Mart.

This troper once managed, at college, to walk into a parking meter.

This editor's hat regularly rolls a higher Hide check than his Spot check. As it's his NiceHat, he doesn't like to leave the house without it. As if he weren't enough of a {{Hikikomori}}...

Actually, forget that - he has managed to walk past a ''large green van'' without noticing its presence until much later.

This troper has managed to miss someone carrying a massive camera in a crowded room. And not notice that somebody he had known for a year or so had no right hand.

And, in the middle of the play, not noticed that the person he was facing and talking to had her dress fall off halfway through. She had another dress on underneath, though, which probably helped.

This troper has a habit of failing spot checks when it comes to noticing anyone attractive, to the point where my (straight female) friends could point out a hot woman walking past (they are aware of the fact that I tend to fail spot checks) and I could still end up not seeing them...

This troper is usually good about these things, but once, he was looking frantically for his glasses after falling asleep, only to realize that he was wearing them, and he once looked for his truck keys...while he was driving said truck.

This troper does this often enough that her roommates will walk in to the room, see her frantically searching for something, and promptly ask "Failed your spot check?" promptly answered by a more-or-less anguished "Yes!"

This troper's friend once stepped out into the road, looked left, directly at a BLAZE ORANGE car, ''and kept going.'' It took the other two of us shouting at him to get him to realize he was about to be plastered - for the twelfth time. We all agree he has a spot check modifier of at LEAST -6.

This troper is known to take at least -20 penalty on spot checks when he's out walking alone, to the point where he repeatedly fails to notice people who are right in front of him until they make themselves known verbally, and sometimes not even then. It's even worse if he's listening to music, but applies even when he isn't.

...Erick?

Recently, this troper has forgotten to bring his handphone along when he went out. On the bus, I checked my pockets and panicked * - I thought I'd dropped it again.

This troper is a very inexperienced driver, and her boyfriend is... very experienced. Last weekend we went to a car meet for his favorite car, and when we were trying to get to the hotel, I noticed that the turn lane suddenly became a lane on the other side of the street, for the other direction's traffic. He didn't. He pulled right out into it. He failed his spot check. This troper shouted at him "NO DON'T DO THAT IT'S NOT A TURN LANE" until he got back into the right one, no harm, no foul, but that was a scary spot check fail. This troper is lucky she has HyperAwareness... but even that doesn't stop her from failing a check looking for her keys all the time.

This troper once lost his wallet on a train, and after it had become clear that it wouldn't be found there, he reported his credit- and other cards missing, and was just walking to police station to report a theft... when he found the wallet in the opposite pocket where he had accidentally put it while not wearing it. Thankfully, unlike a certain acquaintance of his, he at least wasn't abroad at the time.

Lately this seems to be inverted in my case, as I will always quickly turn my head to look at something I saw in the corner of my eye, like, for instance, my sister's ''shadow''. However, one time, I was so shocked by suddenly hearing my father, who was right in front of me, that the noise I made shocked ''him''.

Most cyclists have been the object of a failed spot check at least once. In addition to the usual absent-minded opening of a car door or neglected blind spot double-checking, this troper was once almost hit, while wearing a day-glo vest, in broad daylight, in the middle of an intersection when a motorist decided it was a great time to make a left turn.

On a similar note, one troper and her husband were the victims of a failed spot check by another person. We were sitting at a stop light minding our own business, on a clear and sunny day, mid-afternoon, pointed north. We were rear-ended by a woman who claimed to have not seen our white car (or its brake lights) - or the stop light. Given her age (somewhere in her 80s, IIRC), the troper (who does like senior citizens in general) sincerely hopes the offender ceased driving very shortly thereafter.

This troper's family never let her forget the time she walked into a street sign. They were walking along an ordinary pavement, everyone else had successfully passed under or around the giant, incredibly obvious blue sign... then they heard a clang, turned round and saw her sitting on the pavement looking startled. Cue hilarity.

This troper has walked into a lamppost once. But she was reading at the time. And just recently she went to shower with her glasses on, but that is more like failing a memory check or something. (You're not supposed to see them when they're on.)

This Troper has done the same thing. It helped that it was four PM, and usually I shower before I ever even touch my glasses. I also missed my keys, in my hand; My Laptop, in my lap; My shirt, over my head; My headlamp, on my forehead. The only thing I never fail to spot is my watch. It is also the smallest thing I own.

This troper literally had one ''right before'' he clicked on this link. His wife wanted him to set the timer for cupcakes, and, while staring ''right at it'', he kept saying to her "but where is it?" even after she said it was in front of his face. .

I just want to say this is my whole freaking life. I spent 10 minutes looking for my glasses while they were on, despite the fact that I'm half {{blind without them}}. I lost my check book for 6 months because I had put it my see through coat pocket. I lose my backpack every single term at least once. One interesting thing is when I get stressed looking for things I just can not see them, so now I just give up and walk around. That way I sometimes find things.

This troper once couldn't find her school tie when getting ready in the morning. She was wearing it.

This troper can't find her keys if she puts them down anywhere other than their designated spot on the bookshelf nearest the door. She has also been known to put in her contact lenses, then attempt to put on her glasses ''because she forgot she could see.'' The scariest part is that she works as an administrative assistant and has to look after her boss, who is even worse.

Uh oh, it's contagious!

This troper continually reaches up to readjust his glasses... only to remember that he doesn't wear glasses anymore. In one particularly bad incident, he reached up, stopped, remembered he wasn't wearing glasses, then tried to readjust them anyway.

"Where did I put the car key? Oh, it's in the ignition..."

This troper once ran full-tilt into a bookcase. And fell into multiple open drains. And walked into a door. And pulled a door open into her face.

''Open drains?'' What the hell kind of place do you live in?

This troper's sister has walked into a sign in a store, sledded into a lamppost (which isn't so funny as it left her seriously injured), and off a ledge. The last prompted comments about relying on cartoon physics.

Whilst driving around with his friends, this troper (as a passenger) will often ''not'' point out the obvious (curbs, traffic lights), assuming that the driver ''had'' to have noticed them. ''They'' FailedASpotCheck, and I get chastised for not telling them.

Yesterday this troper started searching frantically for her handbag... inside her handbag.

This troper spent several frantic seconds searching through her backpack for a textbook. It's not here! It's not here! Or hereorhereorhere! Where on earth did I ''put'' it? Did I take it out? Did I ''lose'' it? Oh man, I am so ''screwed'', I-- oh, look, here it is. I put it on the desk in front of me. *FacePalm*

In the good old days, the DungeonsAndDragons skill was named "Spot Hidden". That made this trope a better joke, since then you would say "You just failed your 'Spot Obvious' roll."

When this troper was a kid, he spent half the day searching for a toy helicopter that he was holding in his hand ''the entire time''.

One time while playing [=DnD=], I decided to mess around, checking for traps, spot checking for party members, etc. I spot checked my sword... and failed with a natural 1. Then I continued to fail 5 times in a row. 0_o

Something of a variation, this troper finds things more easily with a cursory search than a thorough one - the only explanation he can find is that his Spot modifier is much higher than his Search.

This troper remembers talking to his friend on his phone, all the while searching for his phone. It took five minutes to sink in. But at least his powers of fail work for him - he regularly walks into lampposts instead of across a busy road, which shouldn't happen statistically. Hmm. Maybe God DOESN'T hate him after all.

This troper couldn't find her glasses once. They were, by the trope, on her nose. This, despite the fact that she can't see past her nose without them. To make matters even more ridiculous, she put on a ''second'' pair of glasses so that she could see clearer (an old pair with a smaller prescription), and only ''then'' did she notice that something was off about her sight.

This troper has a habit of putting things like pens in her mouth if she needs to do something else whilst writing or drawing, then spending a great deal of time trying to remember where she put her pen, occasionally chewing on said thing as she thinks. She did this the other day with her tablet stylus, digging through her duvet and bedroom floor while the damn thing was in her mouth the whole bloody time.

This troper still checks his pocket for his wallet, while LOOKING at his wallet. Which he is holding. It is a nueroses he is glad to have.

More like a Failed a Memory Check or Failed a Spot the Obvious Check, this troper regularly leaves his room to get a knife or other implement, gets to the kitchen, opens the fridge, starts blankly for a few seconds then gives up, returns to his room, only to remember and return to repeat it. This once happened SEVEN times in a row.

That's a fairly common problem. Remembering IF something had been done is one of my larger problems -- most frequently locking the door after leaving work. The routine goes something like this: lock door, turn toward the parking lot, take two steps, forget if the door was locked, turn around, check to make sure, turn toward the parking lot, take two steps...

This troper regularly fails spot checks against objects with a Hide check of 1. He has lost his glasses (while they were on his face), called people to ask if they've seen his phone,the battery might be dead, misplaces things that he just set down on a clean floor or clear table, misplaces things that he just picked up, misplaces doors (both on and, twice, off the hinges), and occasionally sets his dinner on the counter and then wondering why he walked into the next room with a loaf of bread, when he had just cooked a perfectly good meal. And don't ever ask him if he likes your new haircut/shirt/dog/prosthetic arm/stolen city bus, or expect him to notice you greeting and waving with as little as a window between you.

As a kid, this troper was playing hide-and-seek with her friends. One of them hid by... Sitting on a bed. No, not under the bed nor even under the blanket, she was just sitting on it. Well, she was behind the headboard, but it only covered her from one direction. She was the ''last'' one to be found; the seeker looked ''under'' said bed, and walked right past her twice, but did not notice her before everyone (the hiding person included) had started to laugh hysterically. This troper has also recently collided with a lamppost while walking down a street and looking for landscapes to paint. She forgot to look in front of herself. Her mother also once failed to find a cell phone she wanted to use as a make-shift flashlight. She was, of course, talking to it.

More recently, this troper was playing hide and seek at church. She sat on a sofa in plain view. The seeker raced past her several times and she managed to keep a straight face all the time. Hiding in plain view [=FTW=].

This troper once lost her keys. She practically roamed through her entire (very small) apartment looking for them; one of the things she did was to take every object off her (messy) table, put them all on the floor, and place them back on the table one by one. She searched every place she had visited during the previous day despite being sure she had used said keys to come back to the apartment the last night (she had one spare key, but didn't recall using it). Later, she just gave up. When she was using a computer, she started playing with a random object in her free hand. It took her some time to notice said random object was her keys. To this day, she can't comprehend where they had been, but it has to have been on the table, in plain sight...

This troper has, on several occasions, forgot she was wearing her glasses. She then checks her face for them (after several moments of panicking), but it's in a way that can only be described as an 'open-palmed face grope,' in no way inconspicuous.

This happens with such frequency in this troper's family that we call it "the [insert my last name here] look"

This troper was at Disney World this winter, and he and his brother split off from the rest of the family for a few hours. When they attempted to meet up again, in the Pirates of the Caribbean gift shop, this troper literally stood right next to them (they were sitting down), scanned the area, and asked his brother where the heck they were.

This troper had a friend in college who would routinely run into lampposts, mailboxes, signs, and once almost ran into a deer. ALL OF THIS WAS ON FOOT, including the friggin ''deer''. She also one time came into the dorm lobby from a run, saw about 6~7 people watching something on TV, and sat down on the couch. Twenty minutes later, the guy she sat on asks if she had even noticed him. She hadn't, and neither he nor she have lived it down since.

That was probably a failed Spot Check for the deer too.

In college, this troper spent over an hour trying to figure out where she'd gone wrong on a homework problem. It was a mathematical/engineering question that she'd figured out 31 equations with 32 unknowns for, and was going crazy because she couldn't think of an equation she missed. All of this excellent math and what happens? She miscounted the unknowns. Her boyfriend had great fun with that one.

This troper once opened up a glass sliding door and started to step outside, completely failing to notice the still-closed screen door. Ouch.

This troper has walked into mirrors, failing to notice herself in the mirror walking towards her.

This troper has failed spot checks for nearly everything conceivable. Food items, games, important electronics, you name it, he's failed at finding it. A more notorious example would be not seeing the TV remote '''sitting right next to him in plain sight, and had been used five seconds before.''' Said remote is also half the size of the troper's laptop screen.

This troper's boyfriend has a rather nasty habit of doing this with, say, his car keys. This had led us to getting into his compact and him asking where he put the keys and I calmly point to the -ignition he just put them in-, or, on worse cases with the Jeep he also has, my rather more fit self unzipping the back so I can crawl in them and grab them because he locked all the doors with them still in. At least I'm spry, or else I don't know what he'd do.

A couple days ago, this troper was desperately hunting for her lost house key, unable to find it, praying to get it because she NEEDS it. Her mother saw her standing helplessly in the living room and asked "Is it on the key rack?" Cue slow blink, troper looks... you can guess the rest of the story, can't you?

The other day, this troper failed a Spot check on a flight of stairs. She was merrily walking along when the floor suddenly disappeared from underneath her.

Hope you're OK!

Yeah, just a few bruises and a completely shattered sense of dignity.

This troper will sometimes forget whether or not he put the garage door down and will have to drive back to the house to make sure. Another time, a few weeks ago, he couldn't find his car keys and looked everywhere for them. Growing frustrated and hungry, I used the spare set to go get something to eat. Upon returning and eating, I continue my search for the keys. As it turns out, they were on my desk, just not where I usually put them. They were on the slide out part that holds the keyboard.

Here's a neat trick. Say, like me, you run a TabletopRPG for a group of GenreSavvy players. Randomly ask for Spot/Listen/Notice/Whatever rolls before describing a small detail in the setting, and make doubly sure to record everyone's results. You don't have to ''do'' anything with them, but be sure to chuckle to yourself whenever everyone rolls low. One of my group is still waiting on the end result of "sabotage" of their CoolShip that they think happened two years ago in "real world" time. People are ''so'' afraid of failing their spot checks in RealLife that they're nervous about being snuck up on everywhere else, too.

That's actually a good way to simulate the false positives that happen to people that are hyperaware/paying too much attention. Yes, they see a lot of stuff but... they also see a lot of stuff.

This troper, along with her family misplaced a cat. Yes, a cat. He was young at the time, and was in danger of being easily eaten by hawks or attacked by other cats if he got outside without our supervision. We frantically searched for him inside and out. Then, this troper walked down the hallway with the purpose of checking a closet, and found the seal-point Siamese cat hiding it's head, front paws, and shoulders inside a small black sandal, with the rest of it hanging out the back, keeping totally still and looking very pleased with himself. Of course this is the same cat that was found (although we weren't looking for him frantically as he had grown) in the fridge.

AWWWWWWWWWW. That's friggin' adorable...

This troper does this all the time, notably when told to look for things, which also affects cleaning. His dad complains that he's blind. This often results in feeling like "your brain stopped working".

This Troper and his entire family has this problem. We've lost things such as keys, sunglasses, telephones, cell phones, remote controls, Wii motes, our cat once (somehow), and enough pencils and pens to fill a closet. but the worst one was when this troper went on vacation with his family to visit some extended family. During a black out (it was still light out enough to see, but not enough to see small details) this troper and his cousin were looking for the flashlight all over her room, even using it to look under bed for it. It took us ten minutes to realize she was holding it.

For a variation, this troper managed a critical failure on a ''Search'' check: he was discussing ''the Golden Compass/Northern Lights'' with a friend and bemoaned his failure to find them... said friend immediately pointed down to where several copies of both ''The Subtle Knife'' and ''The Amber Spyglass'' were sitting cheerfully on a shelf. He's still not entirely sure this was a good thing.

This troper was playing co-op on ''Kane & Lynch'' with his admittedly stupid friend. The friend wanted a submachine gun after killing a squad of goons with a pistol, and in the process accidentally picked one up. He then continued to look for a submachine gun, not getting why this troper was laughing hysterically the whole time until he pointed at the screen, showing the massive [=MP5=] on Lynch's back that had been in his view the whole time.

This troper's friend manages to fail even easy spot checks. Fortunately, this is consistent between his characters in [=RPG=]s and his real life self.

This troper once noticed her father wasn't at the dinner table, so she asked where he was. Turns out he had been gone for four days. Woops.

This troper: "Hey, where'd my pen go? Oh right, it's IN MY MOUTH." Thankfully, this has only happened once. Or maybe twice.

This troper once took out his wallet to take out his ID card for security clearance, then a couple seconds after going inside, he was still holding his wallet with one hand when he instinctively used his other hand to check his pockets when he noticed his wallet wasn't in his pocket. He panicked for a second before remembering that it was in his other hand.

This troper once turned left onto Main Street from a two-way stop, and misjudged the distance and velocity of that other car. Totalled his own car as a result. No-one was hurt, though.

This troper failed a Spot check today. On her cane. While she was using it to walk.

This troper, when she moved into her new (quite small) apartment a few days ago, had to fill out a form, noting the condition of the floors, walls, etc. She managed to completely fail at finding the laundry room. It took a trip to the front desk to set her straight. As an added bonus, she left her keys at the desk afterward. While she was rummaging through her purse for them (outside the door for the wrong apartment!), the desk aide came up to give them to her and this troper did not even recognize her. This kind of situation is not at all unusual for this troper, unfortunately.

This is how this troper's cat died. The feline in question had a habit of jumping in open cars and curling up on the floor, and evidently did so after a morning grocery run. Five hours locked in the August heat did the rest. Not only did this troper fail to spot her when he shut his car doors after emptying the vehicle of groceries, but he also missed her when he took the dogs out after lunch. The cat in question was old, bony, covered in scabs, probably more than a little insane due to a new cat in the house, and had a love-hate relationship with this troper's family. But still... that was not a good way to die... (''sigh'') A cautionary tale, and an example of the importance of putting ranks into Perception.

This Troper has had other people fail spot checks to notice him. Including times he was sitting directly across from his dad (Who then asked someone else in the room where he was), and when waiting in line for a drink at the drinking fountain (which had a mirror beside it).

This troper's friend once failed a Spot Check... with a mirror. Yes, it was dark, but still, a ''mirror''...

You didn't notice the mirror, you didn't notice yourself, or you saw the mirror but didn't realize it was yourself? This troper's done all three.

This Troper, full stop. However, she has a different way of referencing it. This troper and her friends play an RPG called ''Chill''. No, instead of making spot checks and rolling high with d20s, you have to make perception rolls (or "purple rolls" as most people in the group call them) and rolling ''low'' with a pair of d10s (or with one a percentile die and a d10). Critical successes are a score of 01 to 05, and critical failures? 95-00 ("double-ott," otherwise known as ''100''). It has become so incredibly common that whenever someone asks her to look for something, especially if they know her well, she will continuously {{Lampshade}} it and ask if they know what they're asking. More often than not, someone ''else'' will find what was being looked for, after this troper had completely passed right by it. Cue the line: "Crit fail on my perception roll... ...''again.''"

This is also common to the point that making critical successes on said roll means that ''something's '''wrong'''''.

This troper doesn't normally pay much attention to where my family drives and will notice something he finds out of place. I ask "How long has that been there?" Normally it's my brother who says "Where have YOU been for the last X weeks? That's been there!"

This Troper has got to be some kind of half-ninja or something, given how frequently he goes unnoticed. Evidently, being quiet and low-key works wonders for stealth. I've actually used this to sneak past people I don't want to talk to.

This troper has, several times, done the following in the morning: Wake up, look for glasses in their usual place, discover they're not there. Get out of bed, look around the room bleary-eyed, fail to find glasses due to blurry sight. Pick up glasses from table next to him, put them on, and continue to search for glasses now he can see properly.

Once when I was a child I was playing Hide and Seek and, instead of hiding, decided to just sit with my hands over my eyes. The person looking walked in, looked around and walked out again. Then spent another thirty minutes looking for me elsewhere until they gave up.

Maybe the person took a lesson from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, which believes that, if you can't see it, it can't see you.

A friend of my Mum's had two absolutely ''saddening'' ones on an overseas holiday in quick succession. First, she 'lost' her credit card. Spent about half an hour Wangsting about it, then found it in her backpack. Then, she 'lost' her '''passport'''. Cue a whole HOUR crying and wangsting about it while Mum, myself and Mum's friend's son try to find a solution. We decided to go to the police after that whole hour of searching. My Mum reached for the car keys... And guess what? The passport was ''right next to the car keys in front of Mum's friend '''all along!''''' I locked myself in the bedroom and facepalmed.

This troper, who at a point in time went to sailing camp, has failed a spot check on a ''lake'' despite walking on the docks. The results should be obvious.

This troper once failed a spot check on my car. I went outside to drive to class, looked for my car, couldn't find it, and checked 3 other streets I occasionally park on. While walking back I noticed my car in its usual spot. Worse, my car's a large green minivan with bumper stickers everywhere.

This tropers wife is the exact opposite. If I can't find something (which is most of the time) I ask her to find it, because no matter what, she'll find it. Unless it's her glasses, then I find them. It's gotten worse since we've gotten cats. I'll walk into the kitchen, see the female cat sitting in her usual place on top of the microwave, wonder where the other cat is, only to realize several minutes later, he's been sitting on the table ''two feet away from me'' staring intently at me the whole time. Once I spot him, only then will he meow at me.

Schrodinger's cat?

This troper's grandmother tends to do this: she'll walk into a room and not notice me until I speak or move; and then she'll be ''quite'' startled. So I've taken to chanting "I'm here, I'm here, don't be scared, I'm here" whenever I feel this is about to happen. It works. Sometimes.

This troper lost his headphones the last day before a long weekend a few weeks ago. Like, an hour before school let out. After spending a week or two having to deal with the world around him, he finally found them in one of his jacket pockets. The same jacket he wears everyday and the pocket he usually puts his iPod in. Frickin' zippers.

This troper will repeatedly miss things while watching the side of the road when in his family's car. If I point out something I never noticed before my brother will reply with a loud "Ya ''think''?" My normal response is "Well I didn't know!"

This troper was once driving with a friend, and came to a two-way stop, crossing four lanes that did not stop, and needed to turn left. He waited for a while, and then saw an opening and started to turn when his friend said, "Watch out for that bus." His response right before hitting the bus head-on? "What bus?"

The list of things I couldn't find when I was looking for them at the time has, for God knows how many years, run quite the gamut as of April 2010: everything from my glasses to chocolates I planned on giving my parents last Christmas (though I suspect the chocolates were in fact stolen at some point -- an in-depth sweep of my entire apartment revealed I couldn't find them ''anywhere''). Bonus points for the countless times I had put them in a fairly obvious place ''because I convinced myself I wasn't going to forget that's where I put them''. I also have the tendency to go without noticing someone in the room until they speak up or touch my shoulder when I should know they're there, especially when I'm sleep deprived; This lead to an interesting situation at work the other day that, while funny to everyone, will most definitely not be forgotten.

Same troper. While playing zOMG! recently he failed to notice for about a minute that due to the absence of his crew's previous leader, he had been promoted to that rank.

This troper managed to spend fifteen minutes trying to find his bright orange wallet despite the fact it was in his hand and that he'd spent ten of those fifteen minutes ''staring at it''.

This troper will sometimes go looking for various things, only to find them right in their usual place. Her entire family often fails spot checks for pets. You'd think we'd know to look where we're walking when making dinner as we have three hyper dogs and two begging cats, but no. It's a good thing the dogs move fast.

In addition, one of her ''dogs'' often fails a spot check for the ''kitchen cabinets'', resulting in hitting his head on them. It's a very good thing he has a hard head...

This troper thinks she really failed a spot check when she went looking for her glasses worriedly-when she was, in fact wearing them at that exact moment.

In an actual game, this troper was playing Maid RPG with a couple friends. One character was a mermaid in disguise, but had to drop the disguise when she was in water. She went to bathe in a hot spring, and another character walked in on her. Since the mermaid character was partially hidden in the water, the GM made the other character roll to see if she noticed the mermaid tail. The other character failed THREE TIMES IN A ROW and proceeded to carry on an entire conversation without noticing her friend suddenly had a tail instead of legs. We laughed about that for a good week afterward.

I play D&D/Pathfinder (the trope namer). The immediate response to rolling a 1 on a spot/listen/perception check (not automatic failure, but if you can fail a check, you will with a 1) is "AAIEE! I'M BLIND/DEAF!". Or "Hey I've got FEET! Cool!"

In real life, I seem to have a massive bonus to hide/movesilently/stealth rolls. "Oh! When did you get here?" "...Five minutes ago."

This troper seems to excel at failing these. My most common one, however, is forgetting where I put something just a minute beforehand (including a hilarious one where I failed to remember that I had moved a pack of cards to the other side of my bedroom. Probably justified, as they were behind a full translucent box) or putting them behind my ear. Similarly, my cat fails these all the time (or anything involving intelligence or courage), as he has twice walked into a wall THAT WAS DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF HIM! It is not surprising one of his nicknames from my sister is Daft Cat (of which one of the others is Fat Cat: he has a body shape roughly the same as a rabbit, something I constantly pointed out for about a year and a half before my mother actually noticed it. Maybe she failed a spot check...).

A fairly recent one that is hilarious if you consider that I spend most of my time in my room sitting on my stool (or my bed) in my room. I couldn't find a video game downstairs, but I was certain that it was upstairs, so I went and searched my room (picture a WW1 trench to get an idea of my room). I couldn't find it. I went downstairs and asked my step-mother if she had seen said game. She said that, the last time she had seen it, she had moved it up to my room about a month before. I decided to look again...only to find it (almost immediately) UNDER MY STOOL! The irony? I had a large number of books next to said game. I WAS STILL READING SAID BOOKS!

this troper often looks around the house for several minutes looking for her Pokewalker...only to find it either on the first desk she looked on or already in/clipped to her pocket.

This troper once failed to notice ''an entire building being built''. Let him explain. When the troper was a kid, the church down the street from his neighborhood was expanding by putting on a new wing. The workmen dug a huge hole next to the church and the troper assumed that that was where the foundation was going, so he looked at the hole every time he rode past, waiting to see the expansion start to go up. Several months later, nothing had happened. He pointed this out to his mother when they were riding past the church one time, saying, "They still haven't started that new church yet!" His mother responded, "Yes they did, right there," and pointed to the other side of the building, where the new wing stood, completely finished. Turns out that the hole that the troper had been looking at was simply there to help with drainage. When the troper realized this, he felt ''extremely'' stupid. Even more so by the fact that they had actually laid grass seed in the hole, and he had been wondering, "Why would they want to have grass in the basement?"

This troper's mother does this ''all. the. time.'' a few memorable examples include:

one time, at the dollar store, she forgot her glasses were on her head, bought a new pair, only for the woman that had been standing behind her to tell her where her glasses were.

trying to spray air freshener without taking the cap off.

same as above, only this time she forgot to take the cap off of acne medicine.

This troper has misplaced his car and ''the world'', usually at the same time. There will be times that he will suddenly realize he's in a very different place than he was 5 minutes ago and take a few seconds to realize that he's driving his car somewhere (or walking).

This troper's father and sister both do this often. When he was younger his father often came inside with sunglasses on and put them on his forehead, then started searching around the house for them. His sister will fail to notice someone who walks up next to them until they speak to her and will often scream in surprise when they do. At one point his sister was looking for a book that she was told was in her hand, she looked at her empty hand and couldn't see it, then when she was told "no the other hand" she moved the book to her empty hand and didn't realize that she had done so until this tropers brother took it off of her and held it up in front of her.

This Troper once rode his bicycle on a street, straight for about 100m... into a parked car.

A couple of weeks ago, my sister was having trouble finding the remote for her TV, when it was less than a foot away, right in front of her, out in the open.

this troper, being a {{WALL-E}} fanatic, always carries around A Wall-e plushie and Eve plushie at home. one time she left for a doctor's appointment and didn't realize she was still holding on to them for a while.

This troper frequently spends time looking for her watch in a panic, often checking the time on her wrist and moaning that she's going to be late, it's 12 o 'clock already...

This seems to happen with this Troper a lot, mainly with people. Once when this Troper and her friend were playing hide and seek (With This Troper seeking) she was stumped after searching ever square inch of her yard and the surrounding area. She finally gave up only to find out her friend was sitting on the table she had walked past about a thousand times. Her friend was appropriately baffled and amused by this Troper reaction to that fact.

This troper was on a conference, when he realized he apparently had lost his name tag. Since it would cause him a large headache if he had actually lost it, he went back to check, just to realize... he was wearing it all the time.

One day at this Troper's college, he needed to use the restroom. He dashed into the nearest bathroom. Somehow, he happened to notice the lack of urinals, but thought nothing of it. It was only mid-leak when the 'napkin' trashcan in the wall explained it all. Somehow, there had managed to be no one in the bathroom or even around the hallway. Crisis Averted!

All the time. It's happened so much that Tropers/{{JET73L}} will occasionally ask someone to look around where said troper's finger is pointing, specifically because the troper cannot notice it in plain sight. Troper and family use this to their advantage sometimes, sitting down and blending into a conversation between members of the previous generation during a game of hide and seek (it works sometimes, but not others).

A rather literal one here: This troper was at a roleplaying night, and took one of the [=NPCs=]. The party then met some ghosts. This NPC managed to fail his Listen check 5 times in a row, then CRITICALLY failed it, and convinced himself there were no ghosts. While the rest of the party was talking to them. Great job, Torg!

If you want an actual example IRL, this troper has managed to walk into the same lamp-post at least twice, nearly get run over by a van, put stuff down and then fail to realise it's in front of him, and, at another gaming session, knock over a glass of Coke. Straight onto the playing field...

I occasionally forget I'm HOLDING something, and search across the house for something I'm carrying.

This troper once had both hands full during a BBQ and wanting to get a sausage (and being immodestly endowed), she decided to empty one of her hands by putting her can of drink in her bra. She got the sausage, sat down with her friends, then proceeded to try to look for the can of drink.

This troper's mother has a very specific failed spot check that has become a RunningJoke in his family. She will often put her coffee in the microwave to heat it up and promptly forget about it. Cue a half hour when she is searching for her coffee mug, we all deftly point towards the microwave. Or, we will want to heat something up and have to remove her mug, to which she says "Oh, that's where I left it."

This troper is the living personification of FailedASpotCheck. She's extremely good at noticing things that other people miss, but can remain cheerfully oblivious to that which is obvious to anyone else. Her husband has actually learned to take advantage of this fact in the most hilariously cruel ways; for Christmas 2010, he decided to "hide" her gift ''by leaving it on the coffee table, wrapped in bright red paper, for the entire month.'' Two days before Christmas, she finally noticed it and wondered if it was her present.

Once, when he was younger, I "lost" a new jacket that my parents bought for me earlier that day while I was in school. At the end of the day, when we were allowed to go to the coat area to get our stuff, I started to panic when it seemed as if my coat disappeared until I finally broke down and cried (I think it was kindergarten if I remember correctly). So anyways, I sat there crying for what I imagined to be 10-20 minutes when my grandmother arrived and helped my teachers look for the coat, only to find two that were left after everyone else had already left for the day. It was only five minutes later that I remembered what the new coat looked like and pointed it out as one of the two that were left.

This troper was playing Fallout 3 and walking around the Wasteland. You know, this big, empty, flat territory with NOTHING blocking your view until you get to a town. Suddenly, I turn around and BAM! I find myself facing a Super Mutant Behemoth. I seriously didn't notice it was right behind me the whole time (for those who never played this game, the bastards are easily as tall as a five story building).

Add yet another "lost my glasses on my face" example for this guy. I've also had my fair share of moments where I spend a few minutes rooting for a game I want to play, only to realize the cartridge/CD is already in the console.

On a more sinister note, how many times have you walked into a room, spent a few moments doing something, then turned around to find an '''enormous spider''' on the wall in plain sight? I have, and always wonder how I manage to miss something that A) is the size of Wales and B) provokes a fight-or-flight reaction in me due to my phobia. Surely my primal brain should be more attentive than that?

Somewhat justified due to me being around 5-7 and stupid at the time, but I lost a dear toy, about the size of a stone marble, and I kept looking for it for around 10-15 minutes... Turns out I was holding it in my hand the entire time... Yeah...

awwwww man! I can't find my laptop again!