The day after a visit to a friend’s porch for ‘porchtails’ (an ingenious pandemically fabricated word that she coined to substitute for cocktails imbibed on an airy, frigid porch with socially distant positioning in place) and bring your own beverage, I couldn’t find my gloves and mask, which I was pretty sure I’d carried out with me when I left. The usual search ensued: the car, front and back seats, the space between the passenger seat and the door, where several things can gather when one gets in and tosses stuff over there, the bench in the entry way, my coat, etc. Meanwhile my friend, after my inquiring text, had dutifully searched her porch, the deck, her yard, the driveway. No luck. It was annoying, frustrating, and mysterious. Plus, two years ago I had lost those one of those same gloves (yes, I am attached) while walking in Woodstock one early evening, and had re-walked my whole route, stopping in at several shoppes along the way to see if anyone had turned it in, but came up with nothing. And it was like 15 degrees that night in January. Determined, and bundled up again, I went back the next afternoon and retraced my steps, and lo and behold! Someone had left my lonesome glove sitting on a stone post at the end of a driveway. I deemed them lucky gloves on the spot. Consequently, with this ‘missing two gloves’ incident, back I went to check the car thoroughly, then every other room in the house, however incongruous that the mask and gloves might remotely have ended up in the places I looked. In my defense, I proudly resisted the urge to look in the refrigerator in my state of nonsensical desperation.
Four days later as I went to grab my coat out of the closet, I reached into the pocket of my other coat, just for kicks and giggles...and guess what I found? My mask in left pocket, gloves in right pocket. Ohhhh…… I had worn the other coat on Monday night. I had a good laugh all by myself at the hall closet. They are indeed my lucky gloves! Laughing to myself at the open closet, I recalled a boss I had once who would get annoyed (maybe he was secretly envious?) when I erupted into laughter at my desk over some inconsequential thought that came into my head. “She’s laughing by herself again,” he would say shaking his head.
Well why not? Why the heck not? Laugh more, that’s my New Year’s message.