Glove Thief

This past Black Friday, I have to admit that I made a splurge purchase. Being a new driver, it was my first winter with my license, and I swiftly realized how painful it is to touch a freezing steering wheel with one's bare hands. Thus, I convinced myself that the solution was to buy a pair of driving gloves. 

In reality, just a basic pair of gloves was all I needed. But sometimes my desire for cute things overrides any logical sense I have, and I ended up ordering a pair of black leather gloves that, even with a Black Friday discount, cost nearly 5 weeks of pay at work (I only work about 2 hours a week, but still, it felt like a lot of money to me).

My gloves were my pride and joy. They helped me brave cold steering wheels by day and hot cocoa mugs by night. For the time that I had them, I felt supremely powerful and chic, just as the gloves had advertised. Then, about 1 month later, as I prepared to leave for school, I reached for my gloves from the top my dresser and realized that they were missing.

My distress was immediate. It was only heightened after I effectively turned my house upside down, and had yet to find a single trace of the handy accessory. At once, I began to rack my brain for my schedule in the past week, as well as what clothes I wore on each day. Thankfully, I don't go out much; the places I'd been could be more or less narrowed down to three places: school, church, and Starbucks. By remembering the last time I wore my gloves, which was a Tuesday, I was able to factor out my church, which I only visited on weekends. After a long period of thought, I also realized that during my visits to Starbucks, I did not normally take my gloves off. Feeling somewhat more confident, I realized that school was the only place my gloves could be.

I started at the Lost and Found, hoping that some kind soul would have found my gloves and placed them there to be recovered. Alas, such a serendipitous event was not meant to be. I did, however, see another pair of black leather gloves that, quite disappointingly, closely resembled my own. 

I then moved on the check all the classrooms I had been to, with a similar lack of success. With each visit, I informed the teacher of my loss, who would sympathetically agree to look out for them. I then moved on the classrooms and areas I visited after school, ranging from the auditorium to the cafeteria to the girl's bathroom. Nothing. I eventually told my friends about it, as well as anyone else who would listen. But even with so many people on my side, the gloves refused to be located.

This process went on for quite a few days. Even more pitifully, in the week before winter break, the Lost and Found had been moved to the front of the cafeteria, as if to taunt me mercilessly about what I had lost, but was clearly unable to find. Also, for some strange reason, each time I passed by, there seemed to be a new pair of leather gloves that looked very similar to mine, but were never the genuine article.

Finally, giving up, I left school and surrendered myself to leaving for winter break, knowing I would not be able to search again until I returned. It was a very tiring, sad day.

All throughout winter break, I was tortured. Firstly, there was the conflicting feeling of not wanting to go back to school, for obvious reasons, but also desperately needing to, for the sake of doing a more thorough search for my gloves. Then, I began to lose sleep, partially out of sadness-- but also because of my new tendency to develop theories as to what actually happened.

Finally, I came to the only logical conclusion: my gloves had been stolen. 

This realization was only confirmed by the week coming back to school, when my last desperate trip to the lost and found proved fruitless. In fact, somehow, over break, yet another pair of leather gloves had found their way there, happily waiting for their owner to pick them up. At this point, something in me snapped. I released all my rage on this innocent pair of gloves, boring holes into them with a death glare that rivaled Satan's itself. I even flipped one of them over, simply out of spite. My sadness and regret had all but evaporated. I had now become the living embodiment of rage.

I am generally a non-confrontational person. I prefer to lean towards diplomacy and nonviolence as means of cooperation. However, I was no longer in any mood to cooperate with the person who had presumably stolen my gloves. In a last attempt to retain my cool, I visited the front office, where lost articles are occasionally dropped off. I calmly informed them about my gloves, which they promised to notify me about should they appear. Then, I left and never looked back. I knew the office would be no help to me. I needed to develop my own manifesto.

In short, by the time I announced my plan publicly, here is what it consisted of:

I emphasized the "punch in the face" portion very heavily whenever I debriefed anyone on my stratagem, to ensure that my intentions were clear. I knew that my only weapon of attack now was communication: if by some chance the thief heard about my rage, he or she may perhaps decide to return my gloves to the Lost and Found out of terror, or at least feel genuine guilt about their unlawful act.

A few days later, as I was sitting in class, my teacher got a call from the office. It was for me. They requested that I come down immediately. As I walked down, I thought to myself what it could be about. I have to admit, the gloves flickered into my mind, just for a second, but I pushed the thought out immediately. By then, they had been gone for over 3 weeks. I knew missing items that were gone for that long were gone for good.

Then, as if out of a dream, my gloves appeared before me.

They were slightly scratched. They looked a little more worn than I remembered. But they were my gloves. In that moment, all of my rage dissipated, and I was in a state of euphoria.

In fact, I was so happy that I simply accepted the gloves without pressing the office much further about how they got there in the first place. I did ask briefly, but all I got was a joking reply about the office lady keeping them for a while, and how well they matched with her dress. I didn't think much of it. However, walking back, I began to realize how strange the whole case was.

If I had truly lost my gloves somewhere, I would not have misplaced them in a hidden away location. If anything, they would be left out in the open, on a seat or desk. If so, why did it take over 3 weeks for them to appear at the office? Did someone really just find them? And thinking back, the office lady's comment was strange to say the least. Would it be so hard to say, "Oh, someone dropped them off" or even, "The janitor picked them up the other day"? But no-- she automatically mentioned the possibility that they were explicitly and purposefully kept from me. A strange thing to say on the fly, in my opinion.

My plan was still technically in motion. I finally had a lead: the all-knowing office lady. I calculated that with enough threats or blackmailing, she would be forced to tell me where my gloves came from-- possibly even the identity of who turned them in, from which I could finally begin my hunt for justice. Retribution was only a conversation away. But did I dare...?

In short: no, I didn't. But, like I said, I prefer to be non-confrontational.

END