Ordinary Invisibility

            As I was leaving the food bank on Saturday with my groceries, I felt that I hadn’t quite gotten the chill out of my bones during my few minutes indoors, so upon facing the cold again I seemed to feel a bit disoriented. I had planned on riding straight to the nearest No Frills to buy paper towels and detergent but I decided to go home and warm up for a few minutes. After a few minutes of putting the food away in my very warm apartment, I felt ready to go outside again. I re-bundled myself and was about to leave but when I checked for my bike-lock cable, I couldn’t find it. I checked and rechecked all my bags and my backpack and even looked in the fridge just in case I’d absent-mindedly unpacked it with my groceries, which I have never done. I had the lock in my pocket but the cable did not seem to be with me. It occurred to me that when I’d unlocked my bike in front of the food bank my keys had fallen in the snow. Perhaps that had distracted me and so after picking it up I’d possibly left the cable wrapped around the bike post ring. I rode back to the front of the food bank but my cable was nowhere to be found. I figured someone must have taken it after I’d left, so I went home and then walked down to the hardware store to buy a new cable. But they didn’t have the kind of thicker cable that I’d bought from them before and they only had ones that were locks and cables combined. I decided to look elsewhere. I went back home and almost immediately saw my cable sitting on top of my stove in plain sight where I’d pulled it out of my bag to put away my groceries. I’m glad my instincts told me not to buy another.