Somewhere in the timeline of my life an attic opened its doors and dropped the ladder for the owner to enter. Through its doors stood posters on the walls and copious amounts of books on the shelves, right next to all the questions I used to ask and all the innocence I pretend to have lost.
I can see them now: the two Rawlings baseball gloves I bought, but never got a chance to play with; the first, a Center Fielder trapeze model with Ken Griffey’s signature in the palm, 12 inches… and the other, a surefire defensive net of a glove that I’m sure would have protected me from all those mental and chance baseball errors at 2nd base, a scintillating 11.5 inches.
The trapeze was made of a beautiful black leather with tan stitching along the web and I can remember one instance in particular, a high fly ball to deep to left center at West Seattle high school, where it would have been nice to have those extra .5 inches because my leap was about a 1/2 inch too short. And while my face rose up from the turf and I watched the ball speed away down the hill I couldn’t help but think that whoever found my lost glove didn’t even know how much his great find had fucked me over.
Then there was the Gold Glove model infielders glove. Personally, I think the reason it ran away from me one day in my duffel bag was because nothing that beautiful should ever be scratched or scathed. I think I played catch one time with that glove. It was a good game of catch. To whoever is out there and isn’t reading this that happens to have that glove in a garage or basement somewhere…I hope you took good care of it.
Right along side those beautiful pieces of leather sit a collection of my lost and stolen wallets side-by side. And inside of these wallets are the resurrection of all of the cards that were discarded and deemed unimportant by the lucky sons of bitches that took advantage of my forgetfulness. One: a quicksilver folding device that I left on a ferry somewhere. It’s contents: a 50 cent coin that I probably got on that ferry because, you know, ferries love doling out there extremely convenient change. Don’t ask me why the country doesn’t use more two dollar bills and 50 cent pieces.
The second: a cheapish leather wallet that I either lost at Metro Cinemas or on the busride on the way home. It’s contents: it had my first Driver’s License where somehow my actual face looked like one of those reflections where your head is super elongated and it looks like your nose could be a face of it’s own. It didn’t want to be found so badly that it avoided the hot pursuit of an extra visit to the theater, a scavenger hunt around the neighborhood, and the vigilant eye of the Metro Bus system.
The third: a wallet that I think I had the longest. An accumulation of duplicates, of city library cards, medical insurance cards, a top pot donut card that was half way stamped, both of my college ID’s (the old and new version), my debit card, my real ID and enhanced driver license that I got around my 21st birthday, my friends’ business cards, and lastly…my completely stamped (12 of them) Pagliacci card that would have gotten me a free slice of fucking pizza. I can never get those back. Some dude cut my pants when I was sleeping on the subway (big no-no) and had the nerve to take all this shit and not even use my debit card. What a nostalgia stealing motherfucker.
Three wallets, two gloves, a UW hoodie and my virginity are probably hanging out somewhere talking about the good ol’ days when they first met each other. I imagine they’re reminiscing alongside a memory of the Kingdome and the KeyArena, South Lake Union in it’s coffin before it was born again in the form of a new shiny coffin, and a square brick building in Wallingford with two portables outside and the entire world inside.
All these memories just hanging out in the back of the attic…
…when the door opens for the first time in months because the ladder has found its way back in.