Search for mother

The other day at a function at my daughter’s school, I was searching for my mother. My eyes were scanning for her when I came across my wife and friends talking at a table. I asked them about my mother, and one of them noticed that I was searching for something in my pockets while I was asking about her. She jokingly asked if I was searching for my mother in my pockets. It shocked me, actually, because I knew that at that point there was nothing else I had to search for in my pockets. My hands were probably acting out of habit upon hearing a word like “find.” It made me embarrassed, and to cover it up, I kept searching in my pockets as if I were really looking for something.