By Ashley Teatum
While you were writing and imbibing during the wondrous extravaganza that is Lit Fest, some of your personal items got lost in the shuffle. It’s understandable. But now the Lost & Found box runneth over, and we’re learning that some of your belongings aren’t as sweetly inanimate as you thought.
Small, Black, Manual, Generic Brand Umbrella
OK so maybe I’m not as amazing as that Totes umbrella you carried around during college. You know, the one you go on and on and on about. How that umbrella had one button (OMG JUST ONE IT’S A MIRACLE OF SCIENCE) that would both open and close it. “That umbrella was way less cumbersome and easier to handle than this one,” you said offhandedly to a classmate. Not the first time I was within earshot of that comment. But then you stowed me under your seat in the Parlor, and I knew at that moment I’d be forgotten. I just knew it in my stretchers (you know, those wire things that open me up, but no, you wouldn’t know, because you don’t care).
Maybe once in the final week of Lit Fest, when there were those torrential downpours and you did your hair so pretty and absolutely kicked yourself for misplacing me, I saw you frantically scramble around the house, searching for me. There was a hurried glance around the Parlor, and I held my breath, hoping you’d see me, there, no, right there, OMG RIGHT THERE, by the organ.
You cursed for having purchased a black umbrella. “Brilliant, a black umbrella, because that’s so easy to find,” you said under your breath before recalling aloud that your Totes umbrella was bright pink with white dots and you’d have spotted it anywhere immediately. I listened to your feet pound the stairs, wander in the rooms you knew you hadn’t been all week but would still scour in your search anyway.
Go get a Totes if you’re so keen to have an umbrella again. See if I care.
OMG I’m kidding. I care. I miss you. Please, come back for me. Please.
Blue and White “The Smurfs 2” AMC Movie Theater Commemorative Water Bottle
At first the pack thought I’d be the most vulnerable. I was the smallest water bottle left behind, and besides that “The Smurfs 2” earned $200 million less than the first film in the franchise, so it’s no surprise I was seen as an easy pickoff. The runt of the litter. The weakest link. But all that changed when I engaged not one, not two, but THREE Camelbacks at once in a watery battle. It was the bite valves vs. the bite-valve-nots, and I came out victorious.
After that night, everything changed. The others forage my water for me, and my straw is never dry. Some have called me The Eco-Friendly Receptacle Whose Coming Was Foretold. Taking advantage of my newfound position of power, I’m planning a coup of the kitchen cabinet. We hope to rally the plates and mugs to our cause by the beginning of July.
…A Black Feather Boa?
I have no idea vat you were thinkink ven you trew me around your shoulders for ze kickoff party, but I could keess you for leavink me in ziss beautiful house with zeez marvelous Losties. Mwah.
[caption id="attachment_6872" align="aligncenter" width="300"]
The things you left behind.[/caption]
By the way, you can claim your little terrors, er, your lost items by calling Lighthouse Writers at 303-297-1185 or emailing [email protected].
A native New Yorker in Colorful Colorado, Ashley Teatum writes short stories and creative nonfiction. She began her fourth straight attempt at an Infinite Summer this week. Follow her on Twitter @tee_tuhm.
