Red Gloves

When I visited here a little over two years ago as an innocent prospective grad student, I was coming from what was supposed to be a three week trip to southern California (mostly Caltech), and I wasn't prepared for 20 degree weather. My layover was in Denver, and between gates I bought a pair of red leather gloves in hopes of surviving Ohio in January. They were nice red gloves, very soft leather, decently warm, and very very red. They lived in my jacket pockets, because that's where gloves belong and are easily found.

Last week it was much warmer here than usual, so I switched from my winter jacket to my more-of-a-raincoat-except-it's-not-really-waterproof jacket. My gloves, wallet, and phone also made the transition. Then Saturday morning I woke up and it was snowing and this was sad and I needed to switch back to my regular ole winter jacket. But, wait! Only the left pocket of my other jacket was harboring a glove, and I had no idea where the other one could have gotten to. It could have fallen out pretty much anywhere, and after verifying that "anywhere" wasn't my apartment or my office, I was quite sad. My right hand was quite cold all weekend.

Then last night I was walking to the bus stop (the bus only runs on weekdays) to come home, and out of the corner of my eye, I see: red! I look down, and there is a lonely red glove on the ground by the sidewalk, in the mud. I picked it up and put it on; sure enough, it's my right glove, slightly muddy but relatively unfazed by Saturday's snow. And there's no way I would have noticed it in the dim light if it had been some boring color like black or brown.

What really gets me is that yesterday was a rather craptacular day, one of those days that had me wanting to crawl under my desk and hide. And yet finding my red glove, which only put me back on par with where I was Friday, was the best thing that happened all day.

And I really have to wonder what was going through the mind of the guy about ten paces behind me on the sidewalk.