Missing Drone

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• May 9, 2021

I stood on the street examining a sign for a missing drone, you know, with a reward and all like one would post for a missing pet. We didn’t have many pets growing up, so never in my life would I know the stinging fear of a pet gone MIA (save for our turtle who ran away). Additionally, I never found a pet that was on a missing poster sign. Though I did fantasize about it sometimes. In my imagination, I fabricated stories where I’d return a missing pet to a family— a hero. Sure, the reward money was alluring, but not as much as being the person to reunite a loved pet with their adorning family.

The sign for the missing drone didn’t summon such heroism in me. I didn’t even really care. In fact, I was wondering if the poster itself was some sort of a bit. If it was a bit, I would have liked it. But I don’t think it was. It made me think about what items I could report “missing” on a street sign with a prize for finding. A Frisbee? My sanity? Captain Kidd’s treasure? The weirder the better.

I didn’t find said missing drone. Nor did I do any searching for it. On some level I find drones to be cool toys/remarkable technology. Conversely, I’ve been on the beach many times trying to enjoy myself when the buzzing of a drone over heard irks me and I think how nice it would be if I had a boomerang and knocked it out of the sky. First, I’d have to learn how to throw a boomerang— no small feat.

Perhaps the owner of the missing drone is just a kid who spent all his saved rolled coins on this flying vehicle. Or, maybe it belongs to a pervert, terrified it will be found by authorities as he was using it to spy on and take pictures of women changing in what they think is the privacy of their homes. No empathy could be mustered from me.

However, I have always had a yearning to find treasure. Maybe it was my obsession with piracy, human nature to discover or lust for fortune. There is no single true answer.

For my Dad’s birthday, my siblings and I (per my suggestion) all chipped in and bought my dad a metal detector. My parents now live near treasure coast in Florida. Treasure Coast earned it’s name because of a Spanish Treasure Fleet lost in a 1715 hurricane. To this day, people find valuable doubloons lost to Davey Jones locker.

My mom said when he opened the gift he was disappointed at first and regarded it as a waste of our money (my father is a very practical man, and since none of his children have reached monetary success, he never wants us to spend our money superfluously). Then, mom said, after watching a YouTube tutorial about the metal detector, he decided it was a pretty cool gadget, equipped with a gps and waterproof!  I was like, “yeah, no shit it’s a good one. I did my research. I am my father’s daughter.”

Our Dad is a restless person. While mom could sit on the beach for hours with a good book and a couple drinks, he can never sit still. So we figured it would be a good activity, and maybe, just maybe, he’d find a valuable doubloon.

There are few things I would want more than to find missing treasure: to do stand-up on late night television, sell a screenplay, become best friends with an octopus. And I stand on the street and look at this sign for a missing drone and a reward and I think maybe there’s a potential horror movie there. Where someone finds a drone and it has criminal evidence on it. And the idea is slotted in a folder in my brain, where ideas are like small valuable doubloons. Maybe one day I can turn them into something valuable.