Ruby Gans
Appearances
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
The story starts with a shoe that one day seemed to stop existing. It was a gray and white Adidas belonging to one Ruby Gans, age 24. Ruby had worn it and its mate to work like she did just about every day. She's not a person who has a lot of shoes. At the end of the day, she switched to her running shoes to go for a run with a friend. The Adidas, she stuck in her car.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
After the run, she drove home, then reached over to the back seat where she had put the shoes.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
Still only one shoe. It was weird to lose just one. The next morning, she looks everywhere. Around the car, on the sidewalk. This is in Santa Barbara, California. She texts her parents who live nearby. I seem to have lost a sneaker. Her dad texts back. Have you looked on your feet? Ruby, I have looked on my feet. Dad's. She rechecks the car.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
I was into Ruby's story. I find losing things to be completely maddening. Objects cannot just disappear. Here's what I want. I want when you die, for them, and I don't know who I mean by them, to tell you where everything you lost over the course of your life actually was when you were looking for it. Anyway, Ruby, who is wired similarly, decides she is not going to work until she finds this shoe.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
Her hunt begins with deduction. She feels sure it was in the car yesterday, which meant it must have fallen out of the car, which feels kind of unlikely now that I say it. Like, did the shoe hurl itself out somehow? Anyway, she makes a list of every place she had gone the day before. She'd gone to a city office to file a form. She'd gone to a Trader Joe's. And she'd gone to work.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
So she checks all these places. The parking lot at the city office. The Trader Joe's actually goes into the Trader Joe's and asks the manager, did any workers find a single shoe in the parking lot? No. She texts the facilities guy at work, who texts her back a laughing face emoji and no, no shoe. She also goes to look at her boyfriend's house, where things took a turn.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
He just mentioned it in passing, but suddenly things made a lot more sense. The question was, who was it? It had to be someone who knew about the first shoe and how crazy that had made her. who had then taken the second shoe as a kind of prank. There was a short list of suspects. Maybe a friend at work. There are cameras in the parking lot. She could ask the facilities guy to go through them.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
Or maybe actually her boyfriend. It would have been easy for him to grab her car keys.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
It wasn't funny to her either. But anything was starting to seem possible at this point.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
Ruby wonders, should I call the police? She drives home from her boyfriend's house, sits on the front steps, when a thought occurs to her. And that thought is... Wait, yesterday, didn't I come home for 10 minutes? I did. And didn't I park over there? She gets up, walks over to that spot.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
And there in the tree was her shoe. I'm kidding. It was a few feet away on a curb next to someone's yard. It looked like someone had helpfully picked it up and set it off to the side.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
So many things were put right in that moment. It was confirmation that objects do not suddenly stop existing and disappear. And also, the world was suddenly repopulated in her mind with people who were generally kind and helpful.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
It was still a little crazy-making that the first missing single shoe was unaccounted for. But then a few days later, she was walking her parents' dog, and it jogged her memory. She'd parked in that very spot she was walking the day she had lost the shoe. It was after the run, but before she went home. She'd just forgotten. And there it was, beside the road, the gray and white Adidas.
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
She was back in the world she had started in. It's interesting how quickly you went to seriously considering like the least likely things, you know?
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
Actually, it was logic, a kind of logic that led you there, right?
This American Life
860: Suddenly: A Mirror!
If you're listening to this and feeling a little disappointed, like you were promised a plot twist, something exciting and more dramatic than a story about a woman who had just lost two shoes in a row, because that is what you come to this show for, fair enough. But I am just holding up a mirror to the real world, where sometimes a lost shoe, it's just a lost shoe.