31/90, the gloves

There are several things that I am not allowed to have, most of them preceded by the adjective "expensive."

It started with my Panama Jack sunglasses. I wasn't a teenager yet. The frames were teal, iridescent, round. They were perfect. They were slipped into my clear plastic purse–huge deal that summer–while I jumped into the chlorinated water. The whistle rang for Adult Swim. My eyes burned from chemicals and sun. I reached for my glasses. They were gone.

These were my expensive sunglasses, new and big-girl and handled carefully. I went home with my head down, knowing that no matter how many times I checked the lost and found they would not be there.

I don't spend more than five dollars on sunglasses. I tried once, buying imitation Ray Ban aviators. I dropped them on my car seat, then dropped myself on my car seat. You get the picture.


I won a ring once. I was 13 or 14. It was an arrangement of diamonds and sapphires, part of a local jewelry store's seasonal open house raffle. I was careful only to wear it when I knew that people would see it and be impressed. This meant I often wore it to work.

I was a "sales associate" and master gift-wrapper at Hallmark a year or two after winning the ring. I couldn't say what happened, really. One moment, I was wrapping a collector's Father Christmas with a fur-lined coat. The next, my ring was gone.

I imagine that the husband who'd purchased the Father Christmas was as startled as his wife when she found the bonus present that year, tucked in the tissue she could have easily thrown out without noticing. Maybe it would have been better if she hadn't noticed, if we'd all gone on not knowing where it ended up.


The opal ring was the worst. This happened twice. It took the second time to realize that I should not wear the ring on day when I would play, practice or think about softball.

The game was about to start. My thumb bent my ring finger down, to crack the knuckle and give the ring a spin. It was a habit I had. The ring wasn't there. I wasn't thinking. I was running to the dugout. I was searching my bag, my coat pockets, my batting gloves, other people's bags, other people's batting gloves.

And then we were in a line. The entire team, a few parents. We were walking across the field. We were tracing every inch of the outfield. The game was waiting. There was nothing–not in the grass, not in dirt, not on the bus. I don't know if I played that game or not. I do know that my parents were not there, a lucky break.

When we got on the bus and were heading home, I kept my window pressed against the cold damp of the windows. It was fall, maybe raining. The rain would have been a nice touch of symbolism. My hands were in my pockets, fingering the lining. My ring was in my pocket. I lifted my head from the window; the air made my dampened hair freeze, but this was not the reason for my shivers or raised arm hair. I looked around the bus and thought better of telling my teammates.

The second time was not a success. I realized halfway through a game, again lucky enough to have my parents not there, that there was nothing on my ring finger. The memories of this one are fuzzy, but the memory of how my parents found out about the missing opal are not.

After Mass on a Saturday night, as my family was leaving the pew, my softball coach turned around from the pew in front of us. "So, has Megan found her ring yet?" My pew stood in a stunned silence. The ride home, only a few blocks, was torture.

The next day, adequately rainy for our moods, my dad took me out to the practice field. We had my sister's metal detector. We looked down drains, in fields in baskets of softballs. We did not find it.


I am unwilling to spend more than $5 on a pair of gloves. For the most part, I spend $1.97 on a pack of two pairs that will make it through, if I'm lucky, an entire winter with me and my leaking thermos (this rules out white gloves). They are inexpensive, and I don't spend much time thinking about this. The are left in classrooms, at work and on restaurant tables with an increasing regularity.

When I let myself get a pair of those flipping half-glove-mittens from a Gap outlet, I thought they were golden. A week later, I made Joe drive back across Evansville after we'd reached his parent's house, back to the Mexican restaurant where we'd eaten lunch to see if our waitress had found my glove.

This Christmas, my parents got me a pair of leather gloves. I am a near-adult now, more responsible. I'd wanted a pair that would make me look professional and sophisticated.

When I returned from a hellish day of errands and work, I was transferring my purse contents to another handbag. My gloves were missing.

No. Nope. Not happening. I called Marsh, asked if they'd found black gloves. They laughed, asked if they were men's gloves. I said that no, they were not and I really didn't think it was funny.

When I arrived at their customer service desk, they pulled out seven black gloves and a matching pair. Several were leather; several were women's; none were mine. I drove to Wal*Mart and bolted to the customer service desk.

"Did you find black gloves yesterday?"

The woman looked at me, a bit startled by my rushed, breathless speech. She gave the same laugh. Ok, yes, I understand how many people lose black gloves. But how many of them lost a pair of black leather gloves yesterday? I'm trying to differentiate as best I can here. Work with me.

She reaches below the counter, pulls out a sleek pair with a bit of scrunched elastic on the inside of the wrist.

"YES."

I walk away as quickly as I came, thanking her over my shoulder.

It's odd, the feeling of success and adulthood that came from finding the gloves. I realize that not losing them would be the responsible way to own things, but the progress to making an organized effort to find them is an improvement. Maybe someday I could move myself up to Ray Bans.