Why Am I Only Wearing Right Hand Gloves?

All winter I have been walking around outside with a black leather glove on my right hand and on my left a woman’s black glove that has a fox fur strip on the wrist.

I’ve puzzled about how this could have happened. It started last fall on a cold day when I went to the closet and looked for my pile of leather gloves on the upper shelf. There were four of them there. All rights. So I took one and then my wife lent me one of her lefts.

It’s important to note at this point how I buy my black leather gloves. As you know, I am a fashion plate who races out every year to get the latest trend. No, that’s not right.

It’s the opposite. I don’t buy gloves at all. I find them. And here’s how that works. Chris and I go back and forth between New York City and East Hampton on the Hampton Jitney every week, three days in one place, four in the other.

Where I get my gloves is in the city on the sidewalk. We’re walking along and, as my wife has often pointed out, I look at the ground in front of me. Keep your head up, she says. I watch where I’m going, I reply. Don’t want to trip.

So it is on the sidewalk that I sometimes find a black leather glove. I’ve done this for years. Finding my gloves. As everyone knows, early in my career I was poor. Any dollar I could save, I’d save it. Old habits die hard. And there it is, a free glove, right on the sidewalk.

But four rights and no left? This is a first. And for the longest time I could not figure it out. But then, in February, I thought I had the answer. Somebody, not me, is walking along, their cell phone rings, they answer it, then, when the call ends, they want to check their mail or send a text while continuing to walk.

And so, since most people are right handed, they transfer their phones to their left hand, take off their right glove and put it in their left pocket, then poke merrily at their phone. On occasion, they do not do this properly, and so the right glove falls to the sidewalk without their noticing and, oblivious, they continue on with only a left glove.

Yes! That would explain it. But now, thinking further about it, I wonder why, since I’ve been doing this for years, getting only right gloves has never happened before. And I am stumped.

Anybody out there have further thoughts?