Lance would go for a daily walk through the park. It wasn’t so much for the sake of fitness; it was more of a stroll to feed the ducks in the park’s pond. He would take the leftover bread and throw it to the ducks.
On this particular day, a woman was sitting on his favourite park bench with a sandwich.
“Mind if I sit here?” asked Lance, taking a seat at the other end of the park bench.
“Go ahead,” she said.
“Nice day,” said Lance.
“Isn’t it!” she said. She seemed nice enough; sort of a business woman in a respectable suit having an early lunch.
Lance began to feed the ducks. There were eleven of them. His favourite one, the one with white splashes on its otherwise mallard markings, seemed to get most of the bread. What a racket they made, squabbling over each little piece.
Lance noticed a screwed up ice-cream wrapper near the edge of the pond. It had printing on it, and a picture. It was quite colourful, although he couldn’t see what it said or what the picture was of.
Imagine if the screwed-up ball of an ice-cream wrapper was an entire planet! There was a gigantic valley, even bigger than the Grand Canyon. The blue splotch on the picture was a vast lake, maybe even an ocean. And there was some sort of wiggly line that was like a river. And mountains! Perhaps that was how God designed planets, thought Lance. He would screw up His ice-cream wrapper and toss it into the universe.
Lance stood to leave. The woman had gone.
So had his wallet.