For some reason, I’ve never been able to keep up with gloves, umbrellas or sunglasses. Like a puppy who escapes every enclosure, they wander away from my car, purse and house. One day here, the next day gone. Poof! Just like that. The latest example of Glove Loss has me wondering whether I might have a poltergeist living with me. The alternative is even scarier than that.
I’m partial to the Isotoner brand for my “nice” gloves, or those that I don’t wear to the barn. I had a nice pair of black Isotoner driving gloves a few years ago, but the left hand took legs and walked off. As everyone knows, you never throw out the other one. The mate might turn up one day, or you might buy another pair just like them. In theory, the next single glove you lost would fit the other hand, and you’d have a pair because you had kept the first. In practice, however, you end up with two left - or two right-hand gloves. Works the same with socks and earrings.
A few years ago, a friend gave me another pair of black Isotoners for Christmas. They were a little thicker than my “original” pair, so not quite as dressy, but I really liked them. Last fall I managed to lose that Gift Pair. But the circumstances are quite mysterious.
Spotting them in the passenger seat of my car one day, I decided to put them in my purse before they fell out of the car unnoticed and got chewed up by one of my dogs. (It happened to my good sunglasses.) A few days later, I got to ruminating on the way things fall out of my purse, so I put them in the shoe-box-turned-glove-box on my coat-closet shelf. But a few days later, when I went to get them, one of them was missing. Not the pair mind you, just one of them. Or so I thought.
I did a thorough search of all of my coat and jacket pockets, the kitchen table where I dump stuff when I come into the house, the shelf that holds the shoe box and my car. I concluded that it must have fallen into the dark, mysterious depths of my coat closet when I tossed them into the shoe box. But I didn’t feel like tackling the job of a closet search, not knowing what kind of dust monsters I might find hidden there.
So, I bought another pair of Isotoners during the Christmas holidays. They weren’t anything like the Lone Survivor, being thicker and black-and-gray in color. I tried to put the missing glove out of my mind. Imagine my surprise a couple of weekends ago when I was digging around in the canvas bag in which I carry my Sunday Bible and Sunday school lesson book and found a pair of black Isotoner gloves at the bottom. They were as unfamiliar to me as a foreign language. I had no idea how they got there, either. “These can’t be mine,” I thought. “This is a whole pair and I’m missing only half a pair. Besides, they’re thicker than the Lone Survivor.” When I went to my shoe box to put them away, however, I realized that the Lone Survivor was actually the original Isotoner I had held onto for years hoping its mate would return. I had mistakenly thought of it as the missing mate to the Gift Pair I’d received.
I had been so sure of tossing the Gift Pair into the shoe box I would have staked my life on it. I had a picture of the scene embedded in my mind, clear as a Windexed-window. Only that picture showed a thin pair of Gift Gloves like the Lone Survivor.
I pondered all of this for a while, and finally came to the conclusion that I had, indeed, put away the thicker gloves, then took them out again and wore them to church and put them in my Church Bag. Not only do I have no recollection of that action, I have no idea why I transposed the identity of my Missing Pair to that of the Lone Survivor.
The only thing worse than losing gloves, umbrellas and sunglasses is losing your mind.
No comments:
Post a Comment