So, I had this one belt, my favorite belt, and favorite because it was exactly my size and leather and kind of on the thick side for a lady-belt, but still small enough to fit around my waist and sneak through the belt loops.
I think I bought it secondhand one day, at a church rummage sale if I recall correctly, and the thick brown leather would work those pants every time I needed it.
Until, one day…I lost it.
Gone, completely.
I looked everywhere–in my closest, in the belt loops of all of my pairs of pants, under the bed, even in my suitcases in case I dropped it a dark pocket after a trip.
Nothing.
Perhaps the definition of stupidity is to do the same thing over and over again, but I kept checking, just in case I overlooked a corner of the bed, a hook in the closet…something.
But, still…nothing.
I pinch-hit with other belts, but none of them was quite the same. Alas, at the end of the day, one does what one must do.
I pulled a few others into rotation. Looked for replacements (unsuccessfully) at secondhand stores and rummage sales. Tried to forge new favorites…
And then, COMPLETELY INEXPLICABLY, last week, there it was, in the middle of the floor of my tiny bedroom. No explanation. No note. No postcard of faraway lands.
I thought to myself, “How?!? How did this happen?”
Perhaps, I thought, my belt decided my life was getting too mundane, so it decided to take an adventure and somehow it traveled to Panama or maybe Cuba–someplace warm and colorful and musical, but it knew that I needed it, so it came back. But, it also has no way to tell me about all of the places it went, all of the sites it saw, so instead it just came back to my bedroom floor and coiled into a pile, like a snake.
I was happy to see it, though. I roped it through my pants.
A few days later I told my mom, “This belt was my favorite, but I lost it, but I just found it again.”
And she said, “Oh, that? I found it stuck in my closet, and I put it in your room.”
This story is 100% more likely than my belt travelling to Panama without me.
But, still…it’s fun to imagine what else could have happened.