The other day, whilst waiting in line at the post office, I was struck with the realization that where once was 2 gloves in my coat pocket, now were just one. that panicy wave of grief from sudden loss crashed into me as I frantically checked my other pockets. it was definitely gone. I had to find it. well, first I had to send my package off, then find it. so, I did. send the package off. and find it. eventually. and lucky for me my errands by bicycle route was pretty well confined. and it was not raining. and the feeling I got from finding it (a mitten I had sewn for myself about 5 years ago from a scarf my gramma gave me. sentimental!), tho short, was sweet relief times infinity (ok, yeah, it was just a mitten, but see previous parenthetical statement!)
but. along my search and rescue way, side-car-ed to a marginal bout of anxiety, was moderate disgust. when scanning the sidewalks and roads for a small hand sized dark blue object, I found that the eye feverishly affixes onto all things remotely resembling said lost cherished item. specifically, dog poop in plastic bags. there is this incredible invention called TRASH CANS, people! and they are pretty much ubiquitous. man, the emotional ups and downs those little baggies caused me. annoying! foul! but wait, what is that clever tho maybe inappropriate to bring up because I am talking about fecal matter maxim - when life gives you yellow citrus, make yellow citrus juice. so then it came to me. another genius idea involving dogs (see two posts ago for other mind blowing example):
coin purse wallets made to look like dog poop in a bag!
it's the ultimate anti-theft device! like those fake poops they have to hide keys in, but, uh, different. ! great for traveling, or just being out on the town. at night. in a possible sketchy neighborhood maybe. or just out to a summer time lunch in a fun chicago suburb with your dad while he's out visiting you and your purse is hanging on the back of your chair with the zipper open and a stranger walks by.
oh. . .
thinking about pick pocketing (not dog poop) made me think of my sister (tho she does live with a dog). she was protagonist in aforementioned eating experience, not I. tho I heard all about it and part of me wished I was there. the fictitious big sister part of me that is capable of running down thieves in a city unfamiliar, retrieving the wallet with all its contents still intact with one hand and with the other hand, administering justice in the form of some supernatural punch perhaps, then finishing the scene with a heroic (heroinic?) handing of it back to my little sister while other lunchers looked on with relief and admiration. it was hard enough to hold the knowledge of it from five-ish states and 2 time zones away. I can only imagine how my dad felt. maybe still feels.
maybe I'm glad I wasn't there. maybe if my ideas weren't so cockamamie, I'd have been online immediately, trying to figure out how to birth this little brain child into existence. to spare her, conceivably, from future harsh violations. to spare myself from harsh, albeit remote helplessness. but then there's the whole lighting not striking the same place more than once thingy which metaphorically translates into: odds of that happening again are so preposterously slim that there's no point in fantasizing down that road and also there's really nothing I can/could do. save for being sympathetic from a distance, feeling my feelings, and well, not stealing wallets myself.
or leaving my dog's poop in a bag out on the sidewalk for people to mistakenly, joyously identify as their lost mitt, only to be correctly, disconcertingly discerned as inhuman waste. an act that, for the record, arouses feelings of irateness that, also for the record, pale in comparison to those feelings of outrage brought about by a misdeed of such degree as pick pocketing. sigh.
so my sister is down a wallet, my dad returns home with a chink in his protector armor, and me, a silent character in this tragedy, continues walking my path with my two mittens on my two hands, a daydreaming vigilante, side stepping blue bags all the way home.
(On a side note, I have, as I discovered on my bus ride to therapy, a small plastic bag in my backpack which needs to be dealt with in a do not pass go, do not collect $200 kinda way. A tiny knot is all that separates me and the world at large from ancient picked clean but not quite pear core remnants. I was actually quite relieved to find it because I found myself enduring the same circumstances I believe I was faced with the first time I put said one into said the other: slimy pear core in hand and nary a compost bucket in sight (probably low on the list of priorities for metro bus system). So, yes, I tempted fate and unlocked the secrets of the decomposing fruit but only just enough for me to slide the fresh organic matter in before sealing it up and putting right back where I found it. We'll see how long this game lasts. . . )
