Seeking the Intangible

Matilda: I've lost my kisses!
Everyone Else: What do kisses look like?

— I Lost My Kisses

This is a plot commonly seen in children's media, in which a character loses, or believes they have lost, something intangible, such as their voice or their laugh, or possibly even an abstract concept, such as their curiosity or their sense of humour... and then proceeds to look for it as though it were an item, like their keys.

The places they search for the thing usually have something to do with the thing itself; for instance, if the character is searching for a sense of humour, they may look in joke books or at the circus. However, it could just be random, for instance, searching for a voice in the bathtub.

The outcome of the search will vary: usually, Surprisingly Realistic Outcome (or not-so-surprising depending on the tone of the work) occurs and the character does not find the thing they were searching for, but occasionally they do, in which case it's usually represented by a glow. They will generally get the thing back despite it not actually being a physical thing, but it depends on the story whether they learn it's not a physical thing or not. For instance, one story might have Alice search for her sense of humour, only to be told by Bob that a sense of humour isn't something that you can lose like keys, and she gets it back by laughing at her mistake. Another story might have Charles lose his voice and happen to get it back at lunch, leaving him with the erroneous belief that the voice was in his food.

The character doing the searching, due to their naivete, is usually a child or an animal, and if they learn that the thing is not a physical item, it will usually be someone such as their parent or other older family member, or a pet's owner, teaching them but occasionally it's a friend (usually a senior citizen because of the "old = wise" association).

A variation occurs when the person isn't searching for their own intangible thing, but someone else's (e.g. a kid hears their parent say they've lost their curiosity, then the kid goes off to search for it due to being Literal-Minded). In that case, it's usually the person whose thing is being searched for who sets the record straight. They might also be searching for something that no one ever had, but there was still a misunderstanding (e.g. taking "catching a cold" or "seeking one's fortune" too literally).

Compare Intangible Theft and Intangible Price for when intangible things really do get stolen or sold, and Emotion Eater and Dream Stealer for other tropes that involve treating intangible things as tangible. If someone is told to search for something that can't be, or is hard to be, sought for (tangible or intangible), that's a Snipe Hunt. See also Literal Metaphor and Not Hyperbole.

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Examples:

Comic Strips

• Bloom County. Milo goes to a Lost and Found and tries to recover his youthful idealism and his sense of optimism. When the clerk can't help him, he loses his patience and temper and asks the clerk if he has them. Again, the clerk can't help him, so Milo leaves. When the clerk pitifully asks if anyone has lost something tangible, Opus says that that he's lost his marbles. You can read the strip here.
  Milo: Excuse me. I've lost my youthful idealism.
  Clerk: I beg your pardon?
  Milo: My "youthful idealism". I had it once... but recently I've lost sight of it. Now I fear it's been lost completely. I thought you might have it.
  Clerk: Oh... well, actually...
  Milo: And what about my sense of optimism? Lately I've lost that too.
  Clerk: Well, I'm afraid I've got neither of those things —
  Milo: Oh boy... Now I've lost my patience. I don't suppose you've found that either.
  Clerk: Well... no...
  Milo: That's just great! Now I've lost my temper! So unless you've found that, I'll be off now, you inept oaf! Good day!!
  Clerk: P-please? Hasn't anybody lost anything tangible?
  Opus: Excuse me. I've lost my marbles.

Films — Animation

• The Emperor's New Groove: Downplayed, but the concept of the emperor losing and finding his groove is a theme throughout the film.
• The Lion King 1 ½ focuses on Timon, who takes things literally. He searches for Hakuna Matata after being told to do so by Rafiki and goes to find it "beyond what he can see", which he takes to mean beyond the big pointy rock that he saw on the horizon near his family's burrow.
  Timon's Mom: You used a metaphor on Timon?!
  Rafiki: Well...
  Timon's Mom: Don't you know he takes everything literally?
• In Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure, the Greedy seeks a sweetheart in order to cure his insatiable hunger and loneliness but doesn't grasp that "sweetheart" is a figure of speech, so when Raggedy Ann accidentally volunteers that she has a candy heart, he tries to cut it out of her.

Films — Live-Action

• In Act 1 of the second Austin Powers film, Dr. Evil sneaks into the cryo facility to steal Austin's "mojo".
• Played with in Hook. At the start of the movie, Tootles is looking for "his lost marbles", but it's implied this is a description of his senility. Once Peter is back amongst the Lost Boys, one of them gives Peter a bag which contains Tootles' actual marbles, which he lost when he left Neverland.
• Star Trek V: The Final Frontier: Sybok, the main Anti-Villain of the film, is searching for God, whom he believes resides on a mythical planet within the center of the Milky Way galaxy.
• The Wizard of Oz: Each of the central characters spends the story searching for something they feel they lack. Dorothy wants to find home, the Scarecrow wants a brain, the Tin Man wants a heart, and the Cowardly Lion wants... courage. When they all receive representations of their desires in the end, the Lion can only be given a medal verifying his bravery, since it's not a tangible item (though the Scarecrow also doesn't get a physical brain for obvious reasons, and the Tin Man gets a heart-shaped watch). As for Dorothy, they try to send her home in a balloon, but it doesn't work. Luckily, there is a reveal that the ruby slippers she was given at the beginning of the film are magic and could have always taken her home.

Literature

• In The Cat Who Lost His Purr, a cat named Bootle believes he's lost his purr and searches the house for it.
• In a Frog and Toad book, one of the eponymous amphibians is told that spring is just around the corner. He looks behind literal corners for "spring", and by the time he's ready to give up, spring has already arrived.
• In the kids' book How to Catch a Cold (not to be confused with the Disney short), a little boy's classmates keep disappearing one after the other. The teacher says they've caught a cold, but he thinks a cold is a type of animal and sets out to catch one. However, he gets called to lunch, and then he actually catches a cold (as in the disease) and so feels too sick to go hunting. His mother tells him he caught a cold, but he still doesn't know what that means.
• In I Lost My Kisses, a young girl named Matilda thinks she's lost her "kisses", and tries to get them back before her dad comes home. Eventually, she realizes that you can't lose kisses.
• In The Little Ghost Who Lost Her Boo, a ghost finds herself unable to say, "Boo!", believes she's "lost her boo", and goes on a search for it.
• In the Little Raccoon book "Little Raccoon Catches a Cold", Little Raccoon searches for a "cold" to catch, because he took the phrase "catching a cold" too literally. He actually ends up with a cold at the end of the book.
• In A Girl Named Glazastik, when the genie captures Katya to bring her to the evil king, she tells him she has lost her politeness somewhere in the room and has to find it before appearing at court. While pretending to search for the politeness, she smashes the thermos, the genie's living-place, without which the genie need not obey anyone's orders.
• In Tommy Catches a Cold, a licensed book of Rugrats, Tommy catches a cold and is told he caught a bug. He believes that, to get better, he has to find a literal bug and let it go.

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of The Book of Pooh titled "The Words are Out", Piglet has laryngitis and Pooh tries to look for Piglet's "words", which he believes are missing.
• In Bumble, one episode has the eponymous bee lose his voice and Boo thinks that a voice is an actual being and goes searching for it. Bumble, instead of telling her that a voice is just a sound, tells her that "[his] voice is having a rest".
• One episode of Adventures in Wonderland has Alice suffering from laryngitis. When she explains that she's "lost" her voice, the Wonderlanders (largely a bunch of Literal-Minded Cloudcuckoolanders) immediately begin a massive search for it, all while she tries to tell them that it was just a figure of speech.
• Played for Drama in The Twilight Zone episode "Wong's Lost and Found Emporium," which features a small, strange shop filled with customers who are attempting to find lost things. It turns out that the shoppers are really looking for intangible ideas, like respect from their children or lost time, which have disappeared from their lives. The shop has physical representations of these objects, and if the customer can somehow overcome the challenge associated with them, they regain the missing item (for example, the elderly woman hoping to get back her lost time has to calm down some squeaking mice). The main character is after his compassion, which he discovers by helping others in the shop; a young woman who wins back her sense of humor thanks to his aid then becomes his assistant, and the two begin their mission of running the emporium by giving the other customers a second try at recovering their desired item since the "lost" chance they had to get it back is now on the shop's shelves.

Puppet Shows

• Referenced in the Sesame Street song "Be Doodle Dee Dum", in which Elmo says that he woke up feeling grumpy and "tried to find some niceness but his niceness wasn't there".

Video Games

• Fallout 4: Strong, one of your possible companions, is a Dumb Muscle Super Mutant whose motivation in life comes from a misinterpretation of a quote from Macbeth. He seeks the "milk of human kindness", believing it to be a literal beverage that will make him more powerful.
• Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair: Nagito's main goal in life is to find a 'strong hope'; he acts like it's something he's actually capable of witnessing rather than an abstract concept. He's even willing to go to extremes for this obsession. It's not pretty.
• Sam and Max Save the World: In "Reality 2.0", the Internet announces that it's lost all respect for living things after Sam and Max sabotage the eponymous VR game, which was really a front for bringing happiness through mass hypnosis. The last act of the game involves Sam and Max having to literally find the Internet's Respect For Living Things and give it back to her.

Web Original

• Lost My Dot Name is a site where you can create a personalised story called The Little [Boy/Girl] Who Lost [His/Her] Name about a kid who wakes up unable to remember their name and gets the letters in it from various characters (like a J from a jester, a Y from a yeti, etc).
• There's a joke on the Internet where someone tells several people to imagine a box containing all the items they've lost throughout their life. The others thank them for finding their sense of purpose, childhood innocence, will to live, potential, and mental stability. The first speaker tells them to lighten up.

Western Animation

• 101 Dalmatians: The Series: In one episode, when Lucky starts to shed and his horseshoe-shaped spot disappears, Lucky believes that he has lost his luck. He tried to get it back by finding a new lucky charm but comes to realize that he makes his own luck and never needed his spot.
• Gigantosaurus: In "Giganto's Roar", Rocky sets out to "capture" Giganto's roar inside a coconut so he can have it for himself after hearing a story Marsh's grandfather told him.
• In one episode of Little Bear, the eponymous bear cub hears a poem about Jack Frost and goes to search for him, believing him to be a real person.
• In an episode of My Friends Tigger & Pooh, titled "No Rumbly in Pooh's Tumbly", Pooh is surprised that his stomach isn't rumbling, so he and his friends search for his "rumbly". Eventually, they conclude that he simply isn't hungry.
• Rugrats:
  • In "Sweet Dreams", Chuckie cannot remember what he dreamt about last night. This causes him and his other toddler friends to believe he lost his dream and they search for it.
  • In "Lady Luck", Lou says that he's lost "Lady Luck". The protagonists, being toddlers, think Lady Luck is a real lady and go out to find her. They eventually think a nurse in the nursing home is Lady Luck.
  • In "Cat Got Your Tongue?", the babies learn that Howard lost his voice and start searching for it until realizing they don't know what a voice looks like. After hearing Lulu ask Howard "cat got your tongue?", this causes the babies to believe that Fluffy is the reason Howard can't talk.
• Played with in The Simpsons episode "Bart Sells His Soul"; Bart sells his soul to Milhouse, which he represents with a piece of paper with the words "Bart's Soul" written on it. When Bart notices that certain things in his life seem off (the pets react to him with hostility, an automatic door doesn't open for him, he doesn't find an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon funny, and so on), he tries to recover the piece of paper representing his soul.
• South Park: One episode has the kids going around looking for a "nerection" for Kyle's dad, having overheard his parents talking about Kyle's dad not getting one. Goes even further when they hear about "resurrection" (Cartman demanded to play Jesus in an Easter play), and decide to leave Cartman on the cross until the "res-erection" shows up so they can give it to Kyle's dad.
• Zigzagged in an episode of SpongeBob SquarePants. Mr. Krabs, a stingy restaurant owner, makes a wishing well to con people out of their money, but it was never magic. SpongeBob, however, believes that the well was initially magic but the magic went missing, so he digs deeper to find the magic, eventually finding a strange glow that ends up turning the well into a genuinely magical one.

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