> After over an hour of searching high and low and >sideways and upside down for his missing electric >screwdriver, my father, upon finding it exclaimed >"It's always the *last* place you look!"
>
> Every time I hear this expression, it elicits a >reaction similar to a sip of OJ after brushing >your teeth. It's always the last place you look? >Of course it is! Why on earth would you continue >looking once you've found the thing?? Does this >strike anyone else as a ridiculous statement of >the obvious? Is there ever a place you look >*after* finding something? Just to make certain >it isn't there, too? Could you possibly find >something in the second-to-last place you look? >Even if you find the thing in the *first* place >you look, isn't that place still the *last* place >as well?
>

Sometimes I continue looking for something after I've found it on the off chance that what I just found wasn't actually what I had started out looking for. For instance, I will often find an old magazine that I haven't read in at least four months when I am trying to "find" the floor of my apartment. I usually sit down and read the magazine and forget all about my search for the floor. So I try to make sure that what I just found is the thing I was really looking for, and not something else entirely.

And, sometimes I will be looking for my keys, find my wallet instead, think to myself "yeah, this must be what I had been looking for" and leave my apartment without my keys, thereby locking myself out. So yeah, sometimes I really do continue looking for something even after I've "found" it.