In my column two weeks ago, I wrote about my God-given talent of losing everything either not stashed in my safety deposit box or pop-riveted to my dupa.

So now let me present the latest episode of The Great Lost Dope Chronicles. It stars my iPad, which vanished in the time between when I set it down on my magazine rack, went into my kitchen to refill my coffee mug and returned — a matter of MAYBE a minute.

When I came back in the living room, sat down in my Lay-Z-Boy and reached over for my iPad, it was G-O-N-E GONE! Gone like Johnny Rotten. And also like JR, not forgotten. That, of and by itself, was no mystery. What WAS a mystery was where in this Vale of Tears it had gone?

I looked up, down, all around and tore the place apart, repeatedly. I peered under chairs, dug under cushions, picked up the throw rugs till the house looked like the day after one of Genghis and the boys’ victory bashses. But still no iPad.

After popping a handful of digitalis and cursing the Gods of Both Above and Below — I ran through my mind all the places the iPad could be. Finally, only one possibility remained: It had been snatched by some Sinister Spirit from The Great Beyond.

That decided, I grabbed the mutts and took us all for one very long walk. A couple hours later I was back in my chair, more relaxed and focused, but still cursing out the G’s of BAaB, when for like seemed the hundredth time that day, I looked at my magazine rack. And there, in what was previously hidden but now was in clear view, was — you guessed it — my iPad!

So where had it gone?

Actually, nowhere.

It had stayed exactly where I’d put it, which was on a book atop the magazine rack. But while the iPad had stayed in place, the book had ninjad me.

How so? Simple: The book had been lying there, open. When I put the iPad on the book, the cover flipped over, hiding the iPad somewhere in the middle of chapter four. Or more exactly, hiding it from a view from above. But once back in the chair, I was looking at the book from a side view, in which the edge of the iPad stuck out like a bastard at a family reunion.

And thus was solved The Strange Case of the Devious Device Disappearance.

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A goofy guy with a glacial cool

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I know to most people my launch into frenzy sounds like the stuff of nightmares, but to me it’s not. OK, so I was on an unguided tour of Freakout City for a while. But once my pulse was under 90 and my BP was a down to a mere 150 over 88, I woulda made the Dalai Lama look like a nervous wreck.

Years ago, whenever I lost something, I completely lost my cool. And I stayed lost for quite a while. But after about 40 years of chronic, and frequent, misplaced objects and misplaced optimism that my behavior would ever change, I reached a Zen-like acceptance: Losing stuff all the time was a reality of my life, like the Fine Semitic Nose on my face. And like my FSN, it wasn’t going away.

Let’s take the weirdest case scenario and assume some ectoplasmic klepto had nicked my iPad, had carried it off to some stygian, otherworldly realm, from which it’d ne’er be seen again. Then what?

Then this: After a respectable period of cyber-mourning I’d buy another one. Period. As much as I whine about computers screwing up our lives, I depend on them — especially my iPad. It’s my connection to my friends, it’s my reference library, it’s one of my main sources of amusement. I COULD live without it, but my life would be a lot less enjoyable, and even meaningful, and I know it.

So while I wouldn’t be pleased with the situation, I wouldn’t be devastated by it either. And why should I be?

Yeah, it’d set me back a buncha moolah, but that’s all it’d do. It wouldn’t harm my health, kill my dogs or make my cat go rabid. My family and friends would be unchanged, my fridge would still keep its cool and my car wouldn’t get any worse mileage (which in the case of Honest Abe, my Lincoln, it COULDN’T anyway). The only thing hurt would be my wallet and the only thing lost, other than some time, would be a steatopygic-buttload of pictures, all of which I can live without just fine.

It all boils down to one thing — philosophy.

When I say philosophy, I don’t mean poring and puzzling over the works of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Kant and those other brainy — and wordy — lads. No, my definition of philosophy has nothing to do with some oddball scribbling away in some ivory tower deep in the wilds of Moldovia, or some such place.

In fact, the most truly philosophic people I know probably don’t know the difference between Socrates and Jean-Paul Sartre. Nor do they have to, because to me, true philosophy has nothing to do with books, taking tests or boring people do death with esoteric musings and abstract theories. Instead, it’s a real-life skill — maybe THE most essential one. And that’s because it needs to come into play when the chips are down.

Or to put it in the nitty gritty: When Life plants its 11 1/2 EW steel toe square up your keester — which it surely will — you’ve only got one intelligent choice. That is to accept it, recover from it and move on as steadily and healthily as possible. If you’re truly philosophic, that’s what you’ll do. If you’re not, then whatever you do, or don’t, will haunt you like a haint.

That’s it, lesson’s over, class is dismissed.

Let’s just hope the philosophy behind it isn’t.