I decided to walk in to work this morning rather than bike. My route when I walk is nearly always the same, along the street to the park, through the park, and back up onto the street. As I walked along this morning out of the park and up onto the residential street beside the street, I noticed something strange.

I wandered past a house with a single tree in the front lawn. Hanging from a branch of that tree was my hat. I don’t mean a hat that looked like mine – I mean it was actually my hat. Soaked from the rain, bedraggled, and forlornly drooping off the branches was my blue and white crocheted hat that I didn’t even know was missing yet.

I’m guessing that one of the days last week that I walked, I dropped said hat. It was probably in one of my shallow pockets, and I was too warm to wear it, and it fell out along this little dead-end residential street in front of someone’s house.

I don’t know how many days it’s been sitting, lonely and damp, embraced in the brances of the tree, but I’m thrilled to have it back. I think it was nice of whoever lives in that house to pick up my hat off the street and hang it from their tree in the hopes that I came back for it. It’s far better than my finding it sitting in a puddle of rain and car-muck for the past week.