Lost in the Wilds

Some people lose things all the time, some people hardly ever lose things, and most are probably somewhere in between. I'm a person who hardly ever loses things. Umbrellas, hats, keys, or whatever I generally keep track of them. I don't know why. It's not like it's a virtue or anything. Just a fact of life. So when I lose something it discombobulates me. I gotta know what went wrong.

Today I lost a pair of my gloves. If I ever lost another pair of gloves I don't remember it. I've had these gloves for about five years. They weren't expensive but I liked them. They were a pair of cloth gloves that I got from Target and I think they were marketed as "Sports Gloves". They had a few concentric ovals of grip material on the palm. There was no insulation in them. They were like sweaters for my hands. Not the warmest gloves ever but they were very pocketable.

My process of losing them began with my eternal question as I was headed into Manhattan to meet up with friends for lunch. "Should I bring a bag or not?" If I were carrying art supplies to sit in the park and draw then of course I'd bring a bag. But even if I don't need art supplies I do need supplies for the bus ride. My iPod and headphones. I like big over the ear headphones too. Plus I need my phone and pocket camera. That's a lot of pockets.

So I was trying something new. I usually just wear my duster in the winter but today I wore my sports coat underneath my duster. Besides extra warmth the sports coat has plenty of pockets. I wouldn't need to carry a bag. The headphones would occupy one of the big outside duster pockets. I had it all worked out. But having so many extra pockets can lead to extra confusion.

The first bit of confusion was as I got onto the bus. Usually when I get on the bus I put my hat and gloves in one outside pocket and my scarf in the other. The I take off my coat if the bus is warm. It was. My headphones were already in an outside pocket so there was no place to put my scarf until I removed them. Easy enough to do but habit is a strange thing and having something in a pocket that usually has nothing in it can lead to problems.

I reversed the process as I got off of the bus putting on my scarf and hat but not my gloves just yet. I had to go to the ticket window to buy some bus tickets. So I did. Here is where I'm not exactly sure what happened. After I got my tickets I moved over to put my change and the tickets into my wallet. As I was doing that my friend, Julio, came up to me to say hello. He was just passing through and saw me. We chatted for a few minutes and then moved on.

As I was walking down 8th Avenue I pulled out my phone and called the person I was going to meet. We picked a street corned to meet on (our original plans got a little skewed) and I hung up. Then I went to put my gloves on. They weren't in my pocket. I suddenly remembered a confusing moment with my gloves as Julio said hello to me.

As I was putting my money back in my wallet I had my gloves in my hand. Since I needed to use that hand I went to put the gloves in my pocket but my big headphones were already filling up than pocket. So I put my gloves down on a little shelf next to the ticket booths in the bus station. It was at this moment that Julio said hello to me and we started talking. As I left I completely forgot that I put my gloves down. Since I normally would never put them down. I'd put them in my pocket.

I immediately checked to see if my wallet was missing. It wasn't but in that confusing moment caused by things being in pockets they weren't usually in I wasn't sure what I put down. I looked in the wallet for my three dollars change and the new bus tickets and they weren't there either. I figured I must have put them down on the counter with the gloves. Annoying.

I then had a nice lunch. Occasionally I was flustered by the fact that I lost my gloves and tickets but glad that I didn't lose any of the more valuable items I had in my pockets. Twenty bucks worth of bus tickets and a ten dollar pair of gloves is not a great financial loss.

The strange ending to this story is as I was buying another set of bus tickets I saw three new dollars in the front of my wallet. They were my three dollars change that I thought I had lost with my gloves. I hadn't seen them in my wallet when I looked earlier and don't know why. I then looked for the bus tickets I thought I had lost and they were there too. My gloves were still nowhere to be found but I hadn't lost anything with them after all.

That is the story of a person who rarely loses things losing something. And then having to analyze how the loss occurred. Now I've got to find a new pair of gloves.