By Steve Galea

The other day, Jenn and I stopped at the grocery store parking lot and stepped out of the car, when I suddenly realized one of my gloves was missing from my left coat pocket.
“I’m missing one of my new gloves,” I said to Jenn.
“I knew we should have attached the strings,” she replied.
Then she added, “You had them when we left the house. So I guess you must have dropped it somewhere in our recent travels.”
“Sure, blame me,” I replied.
“Who else could you blame?” she answered.
Jenn is an honest person who has not had any experiences with lowlifes and ne’er do wells, so, it was no wonder, she naturally blamed me. But anyone who has been to a hunt camp knows that the world is filled with lowlifes and ne’er do wells.
“I was most likely the victim of a pick-pocketing,” I said.
“Who would pickpocket one glove?” she snapped.
“Yes, good question! Who indeed?” I announced.
Then, after some thought, I yelled out, “We need to look for a one-armed pick-pocket!”
With the mystery practically solved, I presented her with a plan to recover my brand-new glove that I definitely did not lose due to carelessness.
“So, you are suggesting that we need to find a local bazaar, where innocent shoppers are ripe for the picking?” she asked.
“Or a workhouse where a bunch of orphaned street urchins are taught the art of pick-pocketing by a one-armed man,” I added.
“Sure,” she said, while simultaneously rolling her eyes at my brilliance. “But first why don’t we just backtrack to the landfill and the park?”
“Why those places?” I asked.
“Because those were the last two places we visited,” she said.
I try to be supportive, so I did not point out how far-fetched her cockamamy plan sounded. Instead, after we got what we needed at the grocery store, I just went along with it.
First, we did a drive through at the landfill site and stopped and looked around at the recycling and household garbage bins. And, no surprise, we did not find my glove.
As we left, Jenn asked, “Just curious, why did you walk up to everyone and sing, “If you are happy and you know it?”
“I was hoping they’d instinctively clap their hands and reveal who among them had only one arm…” I said, while tapping the side of my head with my index finger.
On hearing that, she rolled her eyes yet again.
Our next stop was the park where we had just walked our dog. Predictably, a few minutes later, after recounting our steps, we returned to the car empty-handed.
I then asked the obvious question. “Siri, where is our local workhouse?”
It turned out there are none in Haliburton County.
“I guess the pickpockets have won,” I conceded.
But it turned out I was wrong. You see, when we turned into our driveway, my glove was on the ground waiting there. I looked at Jenn and smiled.
“Can you believe it?” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s always the most plausible answer, isn’t it?”
“Yup, I guess we put so much pressure on those pickpockets that they decided it was safer to just return my glove, I announced.
“Or maybe that glove just fell out of your pocket while you were getting in the car,” she said.
I couldn’t help but laugh. Did I mention Jenn has a vivid imagination too?