When The Child acquired her treasured Lululemon, she was offered a choice between two cute fabric tote bags to carry it out of the store, and deciding between the two proved nearly as challenging as choosing the jacket itself. In the end, the salesgirl decided The Child was so sweet that she should just have both bags. One bag is the perfect size for bringing lunch to school; I suggest that the other bag, a larger one, will be handy for gym clothes – but I’m not thinking big enough, because that bag promptly replaces her backpack, and even though she lists to one side with the weight of it, she carries it daily, with no complaints.
The lunch bag – like every lunch bag or box she’s ever owned – disappears after just a few days. Unlike every other lunch bag and box she’s ever owned, this loss of this one upsets The Child.
We discover there’s a Lululemon Outlet about an hour north of us, so the lunch bag is replaced a couple of weeks later, when we head up there with friends one Saturday.
This lunch bag also disappears within a couple of days, and this time, I’m pretty well convinced it was not The Child’s fault, because the bag disappeared while still full. I can see someone walking off accidentally with an empty or near-empty bag that looks like their own, but I cannot see someone walking off with a bag full of someone else’s hairbrush and uneaten lunch.
I’m sorry I lost it, says The Child.
You didn’t lose it, I tell her. It will turn up.
A few days later, it does: the girl who hosted The Child at Niagara Falls last summer passes her in the hall one day and says, oh, I found your bag, it’s in the Cafeteria Lost and Found. The Child is pleased to have her bag back, and I inquire if she had checked that particular Lost and Found in her search.
She doesn’t remember if she did, but wonders how the Host Girl knew it was her bag in the Lost and Found, seeing as it didn’t have The Child’s name on it, and The Child had never told her it was lost.
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