Part II: It's a Cold Time to be Alone; or Love in the Time of Collars-Up

In a move that has stunned Minneapolis neighborhoods, area organization Gloves Without Partners has congregated in what many perceive to be the first real indication of spring.

The gathering of single gloves began as a way of reconnecting.

“It was sad, really,” mumbled an un-named ski glove. “Here we’d been instrumental in keeping a hand warm and suddenly we’re on the streets, being pushed around by snow plows.”

“I’d lost hope,” opined a glove identified only as “Rightie”. “One minute I’m part of a team, you know, watching our bus-riding overlord force my partner “Stinky” to pick up litter, the next minute we’re falling unnoticed to the curb while she digs through her purse for her bus pass! You can imagine my dismay when she climbed aboard without us. I was lost! Lost!”

Many gloves tell the same story: forgotten on laps and dumped upon standing, left behind at bus stops, fallen from overstuffed bags, they are forced to live on the streets, turning to each other for structure, some resorting to anonymous, one-off hand jobs to provide the protection against the cold that they were designed to provide.

“I spent three days with a homeless man before he, too, lost me,” shudders a cashmere driving glove who refuses to give her name. “All I wanted was to do what I was manufactured to do. Is that so wrong? Is it wrong to give warmth? Is it?” It is here that the glove turns away, sobbing.

And now, thanks to the dream of two gloves to be reunited with their mates, those fearful, helpless days are over.

“We’re going to stand up!” shouts one working glove. “We’re saying ‘no more! not while I have fingers!”

In other news, large gatherings of cigarette butts and discarded candy wrappers have gathered just outside of the circle of streetlamp light on the corner of Broadway and Buchanan.

Their spokesman, an empty Yoohoo bottle, hints at big things come the true thaw.


Come back tomorrow for the third and final installment on Rightie and Stinky: A Glove Story.