The Case Of The White Footprints

On my way to work this fine morn, I happened upon a tipped-o'er paintcan in the middle of Minetta Lane. I saw some footprints around it and assumed they belonged to whatever idiot had dropped the paintcan in the first place.

As I continued, I noticed the footprints continued along with me. Either the idiot owner of the paintcan wanted to put as much distance between themselves and this catastrophe as possible or another slightly less idiotic person had accidentally or on purpose walked through a puddle of paint. Either way, the game was afoot. The footprints continued.

And continued. They took a right, which was fortunate, because that was where I was going. Then they started to behave erratically. They veered left and right, swerving and flailing and dragging thin white lines, presumably to try to get as much paint off of themselves as possible. They kicked out onto a patch of ice, and smashed it and chipped it into oblivion and still came out with most of its paint intact. The white footprints continued.

They continued onto a metal grate and kicked and stomped and succeeded only in making the metal grate slightly whiter.

They continued across the street, finally starting to slowly fade. They went past my train station, but I followed. I knew that if I followed long enough, I would finally meet this frustrated, frustrated white footed individual. I was wrong. The footprints finally faded completely a little bit past West 4th Street.

Epilogue: Upon returning to the scene of the paintspill, my friend Adam and I saw another set of footprints going in the other direction entirely. Tracing the footsteps, Adam found that they belonged to a woman, deduced from their one-foot-in-front-of-the-other gait. They faded out over on West 3rd Street.