What pisses me off the most about that guy who has had my baseball glove all these years is that it’s in a box. He’s not even using it. If you’re not using it, you should return it….return it….return it…..return it. I’m shoulding, I know. What brings the shoulding to my attention is that echo. Whenever I hear the echo it’s time to take a little inventory. What things do I have that belong to other people that I may or may not still be using. Whether I am using them or not, they ought to go back to their rightful owner.
I would return them, but like the guy with my baseball glove, I never see these people or I see them very rarely – once a decade. Two decades maybe? Too rarely, for me to keep their belongings in my car so that when I do drive back to New York and bump into them serendipitously, I’ll be able to return their stuff. I bet some people don’t even know I still have their stuff. They probably wrote off their possessions once they loaned them to me. I wish I could just call their names out and they’d come and get their things. A special carrier pigeon could fly in my window, I’d stuff it’s backpack with the borrowed object, and it would deliver it in mint condition. However, some things are not still in mint condition.
Mom? I still have two of your beach towels. They’ve been washed so many times the colors have faded. They are not at all in the condition that they were when I borrowed them. In fact, we have had them for so long they’ve been demoted to rags Skye uses to check the oil. Do you still want them back? No, right? Check that one off the list.
Kathleen Kelly? I have your grandmother’s porcelain nut dish with the hydrangeas painted on it that you left behind when you moved out of our apartment to be with that dork and stuck me with all the utilities. Oh, wait. You did pay for half even though you weren’t living there. My bad! Your dish remains unchipped and has been a fine coin collector on my dresser.
College of St. Rose Library? I still have the book City Life by Donald Barthelme. I never got past the second chapter and I held onto it thinking I should finish it, the way I should finish a bowl of brussels sprouts even though they smell like toxic ass. It wasn’t the book, really. It was me. I, as the reader, need to be seduced into reading beyond the first chapter, lest my attention wander onto another dashing author. Perhaps a taller, more robust author. I didn’t abandon City Life. City Life left me high and dry. But this isn’t about my literary needs. This is about you and your book that I haven’t returned. I hope you haven’t replaced it. Or kept adding interest onto my tab. You’re not still sending reminder cards to my old addresses are you?
Sheri Brethel? I have three of your books that you bravely loaned me. I am still reading one. The other two I will probably never get to and should return to you at tap class that I keep blowing off. Damn it!
Janet? I have one of your camping mugs from our last campout, and a fork. I only use the fork as a last resort. It doesn’t get used as often as any of my other forks. I’m keeping it nice. Really, I can’t stand using it. The prongs are bent and it doesn’t pick up anything. I promise I will remember to pack it when we go camping next summer. You know me!
Sr. Joan Lesczynski? It has been so long that I have had your book Walden Pond you have since left the nunnery. You changed completely. I am still the same. Please forgive me, if you still do that part of the Catholic thing.
David Herr? I apologize for keeping your salad spoon for so long. If it makes you feel any better, I think of you every time I use it. I still refer to it as yours. Of all the things I have that belong to other people, your spoon that you like so well, is the one I feel guiltiest about because I have no intention of returning it. I love it so much, I will avoid visiting you for the rest of my life because I don’t want to have to return your salad spoon.
Pam? I left that John Mayer CD on your porch when I found it while cleaning out my garage. Sorry I had it so long. We aren’t friends anymore. I didn’t leave you a note when I dropped it off, not to put the nail in the coffin on our dead friendship, but because I didn’t have any paper. If I had, I would have written a nice note because really and truly I do miss you.
Karma? I see how you roll. I ‘fessed up to everyone about my lousy return policy. Now does that get me any closer to getting my baseball glove back or do I have to drive back to New York and return these items from that portion in my life when I was extremely into permanent borrowing, the way a certain baseball glove hoarder is into permanently not searching out which box he put my glove in, and mailing it back to me?
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