My running light went missing somewhere between sunrise and sunset, and it’s been driving me nuts ever since.

There’s something about waking up and realizing just before you have to leave that the thing that keeps you from getting run over by cars isn’t there. There’s something worse about involuntarily going out without it. I’m going to be axe murdered. Serial murdered. Homicided. (Okay. Probably not in a town full of Mennonite farmers. I’m fairly confident that homiciding me is against their religion, and besides, I will come back from the dead to tell their mothers on them.) But run over? That could happen.

So, I was moderately irritated.

And to be fair, this isn’t the world’s most expensive light. It’s not even something that I’m madly in love with. (The power button sucks. If you breathe near it, it turns on. But you have to stand on your left leg, face east, and hold the button down for five seconds to make it turn back off.) Who the hell would steal that? But as time went on, I was running out of places to look, so theft was looking more and more likely. Hello, co-workers. Where were you on the morning of…

The primary charms of the thing are 1.) It’s USB rechargeable, so I don’t have to remember or buy batteries. And 2.) It’s also a reflector so that if I do forget to charge it, I’m still not completely invisible.

Nevermind. I ordered a new one. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

And that’s when my light decided it wanted to be found.

The last couple of weeks, I’ve made a habit of stopping by one particular bridge for a cool-down break, and when I got there today… I looked down, and there was my light. My faith in humanity–such as it is–has been restored.

I could have sworn I’d already looked there. But, maybe not. Maybe I was in too much of a hurry because of the rain.

It even still had a charge.

And this afternoon, the second light arrived.

So, now I have two of them.