I blame myself.
It was I who stayed out the previous night, drinking into the late hours and ensuring that my alertness the following morning would be dulled. In the daze of my commute it is often difficult to recall even the familiar things that take up every day. How could I be expected to remember an item stowed in the overhead compartment under those conditions? My irresponsibility, and my own slow brain, caused me to lose my ukulele on that morning. I am a fool and I have been stung with regret and a modicum of self-loathing since its loss.
Now I’ll hear songs that I used to strum and my chagrin is renewed. I type this having been reminded by David Bowie’s “Ground Control to Major Tom” being played in a car commercial. I have played other axes since then, but these have brought disappointment. They don’t have the same feel as my own instrument. They are too light or cannot hold a tuning. Mine was everything I could’ve hoped for. And now someone else in this world has it. It is either a dishonest man’s Christmas gift to his child or a drifter’s new portable toilet.
It deserves so much better. I should never have left it on that bus.
I didn’t even get to name her.
