Green Nalgene

Riding the bus from the city to my place of work in nearby Palisades is still a new experience to me. I only ride it when my sister-in-law, Trish, is on vacation, which she is at present. When I started to recognize Palisades from the bus window, I hit the stop button above me. Previous bus-riding experience told me that my stop request should alert the driver to halt at the next bus stop, right? Wrong. He stopped right then and there. And in my shame I approached the bus's front. I explained that I simply wanted him to stop at the humble wooden bus shelter ahead. He mumbled something in a thick West African accent, shook his head, and drove on. 

Now feeling the eyes of the other passengers on the back on my head, I stared out the windshield anxiously. The stop could not have come soon enough. When I exited, I pathetically said 'Thank you' and 'Sorry,' and walked out with my head down.

When I was two steps off the bus, I realized that my load was now lighter; I had left my trusty green Nalgene bottle on the confetti print seat next to me on the bus. The bus was still there; people were getting out behind me, but I couldn't even look back at the scene of my melee, let alone board the bus again to retrieve the beloved vessel. 

That Nalgene bottle was one of my favorite things. It was even free from BPA leaching plastic, dammit! I found it almost exactly a year ago, when I still worked as a graveyard shift janitor at the Wilkinson Student Center on BYU campus. It was sitting on a wooden bench in the late June moonlight. It was sorrowful and alone. Back then it was practically brand new, without a scratch. It was mine. Finders keepers, losers weepers (though the loser would probably be dehydrated and unable to cry much because of it).

And now it's gone. Sent back into the karmic, poetic nothingness from whence it so quietly came. To find it again means waiting for a similar night in the crispness of late June, when the moon shines on green mountain trees and forgotten Nalgene bottles of the same hue. Or I may just check the lost and found at the George Washington Bus Terminal. It might be there, actually.