The Chevy was parked behind the Pontiac in the driveway and as I was loading up the Chev with two barrels of yard waste destined for the dump, I noticed that I had left my work gloves on the hood of the Pontiac. I thought about grabbing them but figured I wouldn’t need them just to empty a couple of plastic barrels.
Ten minutes later, mission accomplished, I walked up to the Pontiac to retrieve my gloves. They were gone. So I began the everywhere search. In the front of the garage. In the back of the garage. In the Pontiac. In the Chev. In the backyard. Everywhere in the backyard. In the shed.
Nothing.
I repeated the search, leaving no stone unturned and finally, I went into the house and announced that somebody had stolen my gloves. This brought on a lot of oh nos and people started expressing anxiety about strangers walking onto our property to steal our stuff.
For me, below the anxiety, was a bit of anger. My gloves were gone and forevermore I would have to check out the hands of the 35,000 people in my city to see if any of them were wearing my gloves.
I know practically everyone alive at this moment has bigger problems than this right now, but in my world, this was a four out of ten. So, to help forget my troubles, I took the dog for his noon hour walk. Up the sidewalk we strolled and on our way back, I thought I saw two strange objects lying on the street up ahead. I hurried up and dragged the slowpoke dog who was still sniffing up a storm and sure enough, there were my gloves, not far from my driveway.
Whoever had stolen them must have felt guilty and just threw them on the pavement and took off. Or, perhaps, the gloves flew off the hood of the Chevy on the way to the dump. But why would a troublemaker (or prankster) take the gloves off the hood of the Pontiac and place them on the hood of the Chevy?
Wow! Strange doings.
I don’t think I will ever get to the bottom of this. Someone mentioned maybe they were on the hood of the Chevy all along but I know that this was not the case. Definitely not.
It’s getting to be a scary world out there but I am just glad to have my favourite gloves back again.
If you find any mistakes in this essay, it could be because i am typing it out with my gloves on. It will be a while before I go anywhere without them again.
And yes, I have lost a bit of my wide-eyed innocence about the people in my town. There are a few gloves-thieving deplorables walking among us, it seems.
©2019 Jim Hagarty
