The Plight of the Glove
Posted on December 2, 2005 6 Comments
One my favorite columnists, Chicago Tribune’s Mary Schmich, made me laugh out loud today. You see, I can’t hold on to a pair of gloves for more than a month to save my life, and for that reason, I have to go buy new ones today. For all you other “losers,” enjoy…
For glovelorn, breakups are hard to take
Published December 2, 2005
Mary Schmich, Chicago Tribune
Everything that comes in pairs is destined to become single.
You can interpret that as a commentary on love. Or death. Or earrings. Or socks.
But today, because December has just blasted in to gnaw on our bare appendages, we are here to discuss the fleeting nature of the glove.
The glove, single. Gloves, plural, do not exist in my winter wonderland. This bitter season has only just begun and I’ve already lost one glove from two pairs; for reasons I don’t understand, losing half a pair is more traumatic than losing the full set.
Before I moved to Chicago, the only gloves I’d ever owned were little white cotton ones I was given for my First Communion. In the balmy places where I grew up, gloves were mere fashion accessories, as optional as feather boas.
In Chicago, however, gloves are as essential to winter survival as pants, and in my two decades here I have owned about 1,024 gloves. Which means my lost-glove count is about 512.
As a result of my chronic glove loss, I’ve developed a Loser’s Guide to Gloves. It contains these deep truths:
Truth No. 1. You will lose only the gloves you love. The black shearling. The cashmere-lined leather. You will lose these and any other gorgeous gloves whose price tag conjures a vision of your father’s wagging finger.
Truth No. 2. The ugly gloves, the cheap ones, the ones given to you by some misguided relative, will stay in your life longer than your teeth.I lost my first glove of this season–the aforementioned black shearling, barely 1 year old–on the first cruelly cold day a couple of weeks ago. It was the warmest, most expensive glove I’d ever owned. I blamed the loss on the fact that I hadn’t recultivated winter clothes skills, e.g., plunging gloves deep into the coat pocket after taking them off instead of letting them teeter at the pocket edge.
I lost the second glove, dark-brown leather with hot-pink lining, three days ago. It wasn’t a great glove, but it had a sentimental story attached and, as we all know, the heartbreak of loss is often not for the thing itself but for what the thing represented.
Meanwhile, no matter how hard I try, I cannot lose either of the hideous, monster-size blue Polartec gloves I bought for $10 the long-gone day I vowed, falsely, not to buy nice gloves anymore.
Truth No. 3. You will lose only the gloves for which you pay full price.
Truth No. 4. Another money-back guarantee: Any time you pay full price for gloves, they’ll go on sale tomorrow.
Truth No. 5. If you buy two pairs of identical gloves–on the principle that when you lose one of each you’ll still have a set–you will lose two left ones.
“Oh, we got a lot of lost gloves,” said Liz Campos, 23, when, in pursuit of some scientific meat for this column, I called the security department at the Westfield North Bridge mall on North Michigan Avenue.Let me guess, I said. Most of them are singles.”All of them are single,” Campos said. She was digging through the file cabinet drawer where lost gloves to go die. “We got leather gloves, we got suede gloves, we got regular cotton stretch ones, baby gloves, furry gloves. We have fleece gloves. Oh, and we got velvet gloves.”Almost never, she said, do the glove owners come to collect.
I sometimes find lost gloves. The problem is, they’re never my lost gloves. I find the gloves of strangers stranded on sidewalks, on public restroom counters, on slushy L-car floors. And I know that somewhere, some stranger is eyeballing my latest vanished glove wondering why I didn’t have the decency to lose them both.
So why is it worse to lose one glove than two?
Is it because a single glove is almost as worthless as a plug without an outlet? Because the remaining glove taunts you with the memory of the one that got away? I don’t know, but I do know this final truth:
The day after you throw out a single glove, its lost mate will reappear.
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December 2nd, 2005 @ 6:22 pm
This was a great post! I have small hands, and when I finally find a pair of gloves that fit (and not embellished with snowmen or other tot decorations), those are the gloves that I lose … not the gloves where my fingers end somewhere at the point where a normal adult’s knuckle would be … thanks for the smile today!
December 3rd, 2005 @ 11:39 am
When I was living in Chicago I lost my gloves all the time. And it’s worse if you lose your gloves in February and you buy new ones. Because you know it will be used only a few more times.
December 4th, 2005 @ 3:26 am
That is so true. I’m glad you posted it. I think I made some people turn and stare when I laughed out loud on the train. By the way, I have a pair of the ugliest green mittens that just won’t go away.
December 9th, 2005 @ 10:07 pm
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Joan Stepsen
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