Gone, But Not Forgotten!

I was five the first time I accidentally dropped something I loved in the toilet. It was a harmonica, and it fell through the hole in an outhouse. I know - pretty gross! I remember that sinking feeling, watching it disappear. I was crushed when my father refused to retrieve it.

I felt exactly the same way last night, as I watched my beloved pedometer swirl at the bottom of the toilet bowl, and "Wait! Wait! That's my pedometer, and it's about to . . . Oh, no! It just went down the toilet."

My sister Melissa thought it was hysterically funny. We sat on a banquette in the lobby of that fancy seafood place in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and laughed until the hostess gave us the evil eyeball. Then we laughed some more.

Today, I miss my old buddy. I keep reaching in my pocket, and it's not there. How far have I walked? Walt said on Facebook that he walked 40,000 steps yesterday. I have nothing to report.

I also have some existential questions about the steps I took during the two and one-half weeks that pedometer and I were together. What becomes of the steps when the pedometer goes down the toilet? Is it as though they were never taken? Are they gone forever? Were they taken in vain? Or do my steps exist in some alternate universe and someday I will catch up with them again?

These are, unexpectedly, the questions I am pondering on the evening of my 65th birthday, sitting in a motel on the way between Massachusetts and Maryland.