I'm not saying he's good luck

After nine years, I still don't know how this rotund little guy came into my life

Any similarities the characters in this story bear to the historic Buddha or real-life Buddhists is purely accidental.

I started calling the little Buddha-like figurine I carry in my backpack #creepybuddha for Instagram purposes in the summer of 2014 because the way it showed up is creepy. That’s the summer I got all the way to the western edge of Canada, my first and—so far—only time. I didn’t know it then, but it’s the summer my serial house sitting and remote work began. But how the little guy turned up is a mystery.

I was moving out of my place for the end of July, 2014. My plan was to do a two-month holiday, visiting friends and family across Canada, then to return to St. John’s for a winter of house sitting. My furniture was sold, and most of my possessions were in storage in a friend’s basement. My last two days in the apartment I held a pay-what-you-can sale that I’d advertised on Kijiji.

All I know about the little figurine is that it somehow materialized in the last of my plastic storage containers. I had three empty Rubbermaid containers remaining when I started the day I moved out. They’d sat empty in my closet all winter, except for the week I loaned them to Bill for his house move. They’d sat empty in my closet, neatly stacked one inside the other, until this morning. I’d already filled the first two. As I reached for the third, the dark form at the bottom of the container gave me a jump scare.

A mouse! The biggest hornet ever! A dog turd! (This is not the venue for us to ask why I assume these possibilities before I assume it to be a little Buddha.)