Single in Manhattan
Just back from 10 days in New York. The temperature was -15C on the coldest day, and hats, gloves and scarves were mandatory. However, hats, gloves and scarves cannot be trusted to stay on one’s person. For some reason, they like to do a runner…and get lost…most times forever. This story is in memory of one glove and two hats that managed to get away. Enjoy…
One wintry Manhattan morning, a little black glove fell from his loved one’s warm fingers. He landed on the icy footpath with an involuntary gasp. Ooohhhh…seriously cold. The glove’s careless owner walked on, oblivious.
The little black glove lay still. He was now all alone. He no longer had a mate, nor did he have a hand to hold. So sad.
Within the hour, the little black glove was wearing a sloshy footprint.
By lunch time he was wearing several more. No-one picked him up. People just walked over him or around him, as people tend to do.
The next day the little black glove was joined by a hat. Yes, a woollen hat – pristine white with a pompom on top. The beautiful white hat, lined with synthetic, warm, fluffy stuff, just floated down. She lay quietly next to the little black glove. And she sighed – ever so slightly.
You guessed it. Very soon the hat was wearing footprints. She felt lost and dirty and hoped her careless, oblivious owner was now having a cold hair day.
The little black glove and the pristine white hat struck up a conversation.
They decided being single in Manhattan was no picnic. Especially in winter.
Huddled together, hat in glove, a whole week passed. The mornings brought hope, the evenings, resignation.
People walked past, but never looked down. Had they done so, they may have felt pity for the foot stained little black glove and the now not so pristine white hat with a ragged looking pompom on top. Instead, people talked about other things, including an ice storm due to hit the city anytime soon.
That night the temperature dropped. It had to be a big minus something, but gloves and hats are not all that good at gauging temperature. An icy wind from the north howled and blew through the streets of Manhattan, lifting the glove and the hat into the air, swirling them around a lonely street corner, slap bang into the path of a flying scarf.
The scarf immediately wrapped his red and yellow striped woolly arms around his new found friends. They all huddled together for a night and a day until the wind finally blew itself out, up 7th Avenue and left into Central Park. The squirrels weren’t at all happy about this, but no-one cared.
The little black glove, the white hat and the gaily striped scarf were happy to be together. But they missed their respective hand, head and neck. They wondered if there was some way they might be reunited with their owners.
The little black glove in particular, missed his right hand man. Perhaps, just perhaps, someone might think about creating a matching app for singles.
Now wouldn’t that be insane! An app that actually made it possible to match a missing mate in Manhattan!
Amazingly, this whole app idea quickly gained no traction. Mainly because who exactly was going to make said app? With only one hand, no head and a lack of neck, the trio were kind of missing key elements of technical expertise. Also, by the end of the week, several scarves, another glove and a couple more hats had joined our app-less little buddies. ‘Enthusiastic what ifs?’ quickly faded. ‘Yeah, right’, gained a lot of cred.
So… resigned to their lot…the little lost brigade all agreed that no human was ever going to claim them, no human was about to create an app to match missing mates in Manhattan and no human was ever going to pick them up and put them in the trash. “So be it”, they chorused, “no use being downcast or feeling sorry for ourselves…let’s find another way!!!”
And they did. Indeed they did. These discarded singles formed a band. They called themselves ‘The Accessories’ and they decided to party. The little black glove danced on his finger holes. Miss lead singer pompom shook her synthetic fluff in a most beguiling way. The red and yellow scarf swayed and started rapping ‘you go girl’ and the other blow-ins just nodded, even though they didn’t have heads or necks of their own anymore.
‘The Accessories’ agreed it was time to do life as a team….to find a purpose, aspire to a goal, be positive and resilient and forget their single abandonness. They sought a way to be together. Forever. Single in the city!
And so it was. As winter progressed, more and more gloves, hats and scarves dropped by to join the party. Still no human noticed, and what humans don’t notice, they don’t give two hoots about. The Accessories were having such a good time, so high on street life, they no longer cared about careless, oblivious humans – or anything at all really!
So in some windblown corner of Manhattan, there are groupies that look a lot like gloves, hats and scarves that are just hangin’ out together on the streets of New York, having this rip snorting time, singing their little hearts out, dancing to the rhythm of the beat, and not caring a toss for their owners. And the best part? Their owners will never know.
©Leigh Hay 2019