My plot in the Fenway abuts our wonderful Special Needs Garden (pictured here), which runs three-quarters of the length of our entire row.  It has wheelchair accessible paths and raised plots.  It's also where we keep tools for general use, like the push reel mower, a ladder, and so on.

Because of the need to keep the entire plot up, and to have people around to assist, there are ordinary little plots in there, too, and one of them is right over my back fence.  It belongs to a woman, we'll call her Angie, and her little dog Scruffy.

I dropped in yesterday afternoon — the heat wave has abated and the last two days have been perfect tens: in the eighties, but dry, with a cool sea breeze.  I weeded and watered, and then took out my thermos of home-made lemonade, cracked open my book, kicked off my flip-flops, and settled into my favorite lawn chair.

Just as I was reaching Zen: "Um, excuse me!  Mike?" : a voice from The Needs, as we call it.

A little jangled, I stand up and go over to the fence.  It's Angie and Scruff.

"Hey, Ange. Hey Scruff.  What's going on?"

She's looking past me, hungrily, at a shovel I've propped up against a tree in my garden.

"Is that, um, your shovel?" She asks, suggestively.

What she's suggesting I can't imagine.  I mean, of course it's my shovel.

I'm like, "Yeah. You need to borrow it?"

"Well," she hedges, "it's just that I had a shovel that looked just like that.  And it's gone."

"Wow, Ange.  I feel for you.  I'm happy to lend you mine."

"Well, are you sure it's yours?"

"Angie, this shovel has been in my family for generations.  My great grandfather brought it over on the boat from Italy in 1893. My father was conceived on this shovel.  Yes, I'm sure it's my shovel."

"Well, it's just that I had one just like it and now it's gone."

I'm not even going there.

"I actually have two," I told her. (I know this seems suspicious under the circumstances, but people give me shovels — what can I say?) "Would you like to borrow one?"

"Yes, please," Angie says, pointing to the one that supposedly looks just like hers.  "That one."

I hand it over the fence to her, and she's all like, "why don't we keep it right here on this side" — The Needs side, that is — "and if you need it you can just reach right over and get it, 'kay?"

Bitch wants me to borrow my OWN shovel FROM HER now. 

Neighbors.  I shrugged.  I thought, hey, I've got two.  No worries.  But I felt like I'd just been bamboozled.  Now it seemed like it really was her shovel all along.  But I borrowed that shovel from someone four years ago — two years before Angie even came along! That shovel has been through every phase of this garden with me.  I know it's mine!  I'm NOT IMAGINING IT!  But because I'm not one of these people who puts my name on everything, there's really no proof now that it's on the other side of the fence that it ever belonged to me at all. 

It reminded me immediately of the Old Umbrella Trick an acquaintance of mine from years ago tried to teach me.

We had gone to the museum and when we were finished it was raining.  Neither of us had brought an umbrella.  She was like, no problem, I'll get one from the lost-n-found.  She was from Philly, and maybe that's how they roll there.  But in the Indiana of my storied youth claiming someone else's umbrella from a museum lost-n-found — when it's raining, no less! — would have been scandalous.  If you were ever forced to do it, you would never tell a soul — it would ruin you!  You'd take the secret with you to your grave.

She strode right up to the coat check and told the clerk, "I lost my umbrella."

The clerk asked her to describe it.

Well, they were all sitting there propped up in the lost-n-found box in plain view, and all she had to do was pick the prettiest one, describe what she was looking at, and the clerk handed it right over. 

I could not believe it.

She came out with a big grin and a polka dot umbrella.  I would have been more discreet about it, but whatever.  She was like, "now you try!"

We went around to the other entrance, where there's another coat check, and another lost-n-found full of umbrellas.  I went to the counter, a little nervous, but with my game face on.  I could tell the coat check lady could smell my fear.

"Hi, I um..." I looked back at my friend, who urged me on from out in the corridor by waving her polka dot umbrella and bustin' out her Gene Kelly moves.  "I think I lost my umbrella."

The coat check lady narrowed her eyes.  "You think you lost your umbrella, or did you lose your umbrella?" 

I bit my lip.  This was an unanticipated road block.

"I, um, I'm pretty sure, it was, um, that one," I said, pointing to a nondescript black tote.

"You're pretty sure?" she said, looking askance.

"Yeah," I muttered.  "It... it looks kinda like the one I... I think I, um, lost."

"Well, you better be 100% sure," she said, fixing me in the eye.  "Because if it's not your umbrella, that maybe you lost and maybe you didn't, then somebody else is gonna come in here, someone who knows they lost theirs, and knows it's theirs, but, guess what?  It's not gonna be there.  And that's MY KARMA you're messing with."

"Yes, ma'am," I muttered.

(That's what, in the Midwest of my youth, they taught boys to say in this sort of situation.  "Yes, ma'am," "yes, sir."  These were mantras to ward off the consequences of ill-planned schemes once you got caught.  The spell could be broken easily enough with a "don't you 'yes, ma'am' me, boy!" Which probably explains why people don't use it much anymore.)

"And YOUR KARMA?" The coat check lady continued. "You want to know about YOUR KARMA?"

"Yes, ma'am."
 
"Well, someday, when you're old and need an umbrella, it won't be waiting for you in the lost-n-found because the coat check clerk at the museum gave it to some young fellow who maybe lost his, and maybe didn't but just didn't want to get caught in the rain.  And then you'll have to walk home in the rain, and maybe you'll catch pneumonia and die."

"Yes, ma'am."

"So?" she fixed me in the eye.

"So, um, yeah," I said.  "That little black one looks about right."

Strangely liberating.

And I still have it.  And sometimes I look at it, and take comfort in knowing how I'll die someday.

But back to the shovel.  I handed it over the fence — it was too beautiful a day and I was too close to Zen to negotiate the terms of shared custody — and went back to my lawn chair. 

A little later, Angie called over again.  This time asking me to move a beam for her she was using as a border for a bed, which turned into three, plus some concrete pavers. 

Hey, always happy to help. 

Just as we wrapped up, she said she was going off with her wheelbarrow to get some woodchips.  As she headed out, she suddenly remembered:

"Oops!  Better get my shovel!  I'll need my shovel, heh heh!"

Her shovel.  Not an hour had gone by, and already she's referring to what had for four long years been my shovel  as all the sudden her shovel. 

Well, we'll just have to see about that.  Karma or no.