Christmas is just about here, work is done for a while, etc. etc. Yesterday I met a person, a human being, a man, at Shake Shake on the Upper East Side. I ordered a double cheeseburger. This was the first time I've had a double cheeseburger at Shake Shack. It was good, I guess, but for me it was too much meat. In other words, I like just one patty. I also had a chocolate milkshake.
It was really busy, as it tends to be, and me and the human existent had no choice but to sit on a bench next to the condiments area, and also right next to a door that kept opening and closing as patrons walked in and out, allowing for freezing gusts of winds to blow in and up my jacket and pant legs.
I had my Kindle with me, and I placed the Kindle on the bench between me and the organism person. I saw it - the Kingle - on the bench. The someone saw it. Then, sometime later, it was time to go, so we got up. But wait - where was my Kindle? It was no longer on the bench. It wasn't on the floor. I checked my pockets. It was nowhere to be seen.
The someone wondered if someone had stolen it, but such a thing would have been very difficult. The Kindle was on the bench between us, and I couldn't see how someone could be so clever as to grab it without being noticed.
I went to an employee and said, "excuse my good man, but is there some sort of lost and found? I lost my Kindle." A few minutes later he returned with my Kindle. I was happy, of course, and I had no idea what could have happened. Someone must have found it and turned it in, but just how it got from the bench, where I was sitting the whole time, to where someone found it and turned it into an employee without detection by myself, is beyond me.
I said goodbye to the thingy person, and later that day found myself at a friend's apartment. We then got in his car, picked up someone else, and drove to Trenton, New Jersey, for pizza at DeLorenzo's.
DeLorenzo's is an unassuming place, with real, working-class people who eat pizza. There was a dancing and singing Santa - if you put a quarter into him, he would sing your favorite Christmas song and dance around. Honestly, it was a bit disturbing, and when he stopped doing his thing and no one was putting in another quarter, he stared directly at me. Like, directly at me. It made me feel uncomfortable.
Anyway, we finished our pizza, it was good, etc. etc. When we were back in my friend's car I went to grab my Kindle but couldn't find it. Not again! We looked and looked but to no avail. "I must have left it in your apartment," I said to my friend. He agreed that was probably the case.
Today I talked to my friend, and he looked throughout his apartment but couldn't find my Kindle. He searched his car again, in daylight, and could not find it.
The Kindle is gone. I lost it twice in one day, and the second time seems to be for good. I've had it for a year and a half and I've never lost it, and then twice in one day. Why has god done this to me? What purpose does my misery serve? These are the questions that haunt humanity.
**Update**
A couple of months later my friend's wife was cleaning up the apartment and found my Kindle. As I type these words it's sitting across from me, but I don't really use it that much because I like reading paper books.
