ok, listen, i'm not a writer but i feel compelled to come up with a story about how this hat came to be when i saw it. ugh, i know i'm going to regret this, oh well here goes.................
35 year old Abigail had an appointment with her dentist at the city square mall. she brings her 5 month old baby girl, Jessica, with her. she walks up the parkade stairwell with Jessica in a baby sling and passes the water main pipe.
Abigail says to the receptionist at the dentist: hi Bonnie, i'm here for my 4 o'clock. Bonnie looks up, smiles at the baby and says: pretty hat. she loves how people respond to sight of her baby with bursts of smiles and this perceptible projection of warmth.
as she waits for her appointment she watches people walking in the mall. she wonders why they aren't at work. then she thinks about the people she used to work with up until 5 months ago. she can visualize exactly what the office would sound like (lots of keyboard clicking), the temperature (too warm), the smells (someone toasting bread), the sight (developers reclined in their chairs listening to music on their headphones) and the background noise of people talking softly on their telephones.
the gurgle of her baby pulls her back to the ambiently-lit dentist office just as Bonnie calls her in.
later, Abigail walks out of dentist office, she's happy to be mobile again. to have been released from the confines of the chair. as she waves goodbye to Bonnie, she imagines that she would feel trapped doing Bonnie's job of making appointments, answering the phone, taking payment, over and over and over again. the same thing every day.
but then, she thinks, isn't she doing the same motions over and over with Jessica? feeding, cleaning, rocking, carrying, again and again?
as she contemplates the absurdity of life and how we're all just repeating patterns, she rounds the stairwell where the water main sits and needs to suddenly scratch her nose which silently pushes her baby's hat to the ground.
Jessica's crying during the process of installing her into the car seat has made Abigail forget about the hat.
5 minutes later, a 25 year old asian male who's just come from pumping iron at the gym in the mall walks down the stairwell, sees the hat and places it carefully on the pipe.
1 comment:
It could be "yarnbombing", which seems to be gaining momentum around the world, though I can't be bothered myself.
However, your story is better.
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