text: <This is a true story, although don't expect much excitement> "That stack of pallets is much too high..." Those who have worked in warehouses will tell you: the thoughts that consume your mind soon become as plain and dreary as the warehouse itself; Observations so boring, so flavorless, that they start to physically pain and strain your body. But that stack of pallets was stacked much too high. Typically only 10 were allowed in a stack but this particular stack had atleast 20. It towered over the smaller stacks of pallets surrounding it and was the focal point of my day as I ran a pallet-jack back and forth. I was tasked with taking pallets full of trash and dumping them into a trash bin outside one of the loading docks. I had a guy named Danny helping me. One of those old coke-head types. Had 7 kids and a full gray beard down to his chest. He was outside in the outhouse, likely taking bumps off his car key and chain-smoking cigarettes, which was fine with me. Mind-numbing tasks in a mind-numbing environment was strenuous enough, forced small-talk was something I could do without. "Man, that stack of pallets is way too high. How did they even get them that high? Must have used a forklift." I thought to myself as I again passed the tower of sloppily stacked wood. Ole Danny boy eventually came back inside, with a pep in his step and a Mountain Dew in his pocket. The man looked and acted like absolute death when he was off his high but was a whistling, singing, showman when he finally got his fix. "John ask about me?", he asked as I was pulling a full pallet of trash towards the loading dock. '"Nah, haven't seem him in a minute, you're good." "Man I don't know what it is but I've had to piss like twelve times today!" Danny said while he helped me tilt the pallet full of trash into the dumpster outside. Messes off bungled up plastic wrap, cardboard, and bits of broken wood would spill out into the dumpster and either me or Danny would hop outside on top of it to stomp it down and make room for more. Every now and then Ole Danny boy would find something in the dumpster that wasn't warehouse trash and set it off to the side so he could take it home later. "Man these things ain't ever even been opened!" He said cheerily as he neatly stacked about a half dozen boxes of Post-it notes on the outside edge of the dumpster. "Hell yeah, man!", I responded plainly. Then there was something that caught my eye; on top of the pile of trash had just been dumped out was an old gray shirt, bungled up and dirty. "Someone lost a shirt!", I pointed to the trash below me as I stood on the loading dock. Danny sloppily and slowly maneuvered his way through the garbage to where I was at. He picked up the old shirt, dusted it off with a hard hit against the dumpster, and gave it a thorough examining before ultimately shrugging and tossing it back into the garbage. "Well that's probably what happened to my hat. Trashed then dumped.", I thought to myself. It was a plain red cap that I wore on my first day of work. I didn't know the job required a hard-hat so I ended up discarding it on the floor against the wall and completely forgot about it by the time I had left that day. The next day it was gone. It's a hat I'd like to have kept too. I like plain colored hats and this one my girlfriend had bought me during a trip to D.C. Nonetheless, I chalked it up as a loss and didn't give it much thought. But anyways, what happened next is the whole reason for me writing this story. To most, the way this story concludes will seem odd and anticlimactic. To others, and again, probably much fewer, the series of events that follow will be extremely relatable. Ole Danny boy and I walked back to the other side of the warehouse to retrieve another pallet of trash, and in doing so, we passed the stack of pallets that was stacked much too high. "Man.", I thought to myself, "This stack of pallets is...what the..." For there, on the very top of the tower of pallets I had passed and looked over a dozen times that day, folded in between the wood, sticking out like a sore thumb...was my bright red cap.