Lost and Found and Found and Lost

Last week, on my Sound Transit commute out to school, I left—as I usually do at least once a year—my helmet on the bus. It happened, as it has in the past, because my essentially-mindless process of debarking was changed up a little. Some guy sitting a few seats ahead of me asked me a question about the upcoming stop, I got up to answer him, and then when he stepped off, I did too, forgetting to return to my seat and pluck my helmet from the storage rack above my seat.

“Aw shit!” I ejaculated upon realizing what I’d done, turning around just in time to see the vehicle from which I’d just exited disappear off into the distance. I immediately began strategizing about how I might possibly get my helmet back, trying to figure out when I could make it downtown to the Metro office so I could check out their lost and found, balancing the time it would take to do that with “aw fuck it, I’ll just go buy a new one.”

But then, events transpired such that, contrary to my original plans, I needed to catch the bus back from school and lo and behold, what should pull up at the appointed hour, but the very same motor coach that brought me out in the morning (easy to identify because it was wrapped in a Pemco insurance company advertisement Northwest Profile #28: Bumper Sticker Idealist) and there, inside, just where I’d left it, was my helmet. Woo-hoo.

Lost and found.

This morning, by contrast, as I was exiting the bus, I dropped my ID card/bus pass right down the front steps of the vehicle, where it bounced into a tiny little crack and slid far out of reach, even of my Swiss army knife, whose blade just pushed it even further and further away, deep into the bowels of the handicapped-lift machinery, in sight, but gone forever.

Found and lost.