Dropping a glove
Dropping a glove is so common that cities in winter are dotted with single gloves, many of them lifted onto railings and fence posts by passersby. A 1903 collection read a dropped glove as news of a lover or an invitation.
What it may mean
Walk any city street in late winter and you will see them: a single mitten on a fence spike, a leather glove balanced on a railing, a child's glove tucked onto a bench. None of them climbed up there. A stranger found each one in the slush, picked it up and put it at eye level, in the faint hope that its owner would come back the same way. It may be the most common small kindness in the world, done without thanks or witnesses. Dropping your own glove can feel careless, and the 1903 notion that a dropped glove carries news of a lover is a sweeter way to see it. The fence posts suggest another reading: when you lose something small, there is a fair chance someone has already lifted it out of the mud for you.
Depending on how you saw it
Dropping one as you set out
A 1903 encyclopedia counted it unfortunate to drop a glove while pulling your gloves on to set out. A fumble at the door can color a whole trip if you let it. When a day begins with a small slip, how long does it stay with you?
Left glove or right
The same collection held that dropping the left glove meant your lover was thinking of you, and dropping the right, that a letter was on its way. Whom would you most like to hear from this week?
Finding an odd glove on the path
Another entry in it warned against picking up an odd glove, while today most people lift it onto the nearest railing. When you see something a stranger dropped, do you lift it up or step around it?
Why it happens in nature
Gloves come off one at a time (to use a phone, find keys or shake hands), and a single glove tucked in a pocket or under an arm falls out easily. That is why lone gloves are so common on sidewalks, and why people who find one so often set it on a fence or railing where the owner might see it.
To reflect on
Who has put back something you dropped without waiting to be thanked?