This summer I’ve been walking my dog Jack each morning and then riding my bike 8-10 miles for exercise. Our area has plenty of bike/walking paths and bike lanes, so there are usually fellow bikers, dog walkers, parents with baby strollers, power walkers, joggers, and serious runners, depending on the time of day.
Some mornings there is a stream of high school boys running in shorts and bare chests, getting in shape for the new track season. Other days there are young army reservists jogging in camo pants and t-shirts, sweating to the barking beat of their NCO’s voice.
Over the years I’ve found many strange things dropped along the way. On the sidewalk there have been infant pacifiers, stocking hats, mittens, random socks, baseball caps, homework papers (not eaten by the dog), even dental floss.
If you have a child, you know that things can disappear easily when you’re not watching. I think children just enjoy throwing things and watching them fade into the distance before screaming bloody murder when they can no longer see them. That could attest for many lost items.
But strange objects like dental floss? I have questions. Why were you flossing while walking, jogging, or biking? Multi-tasking takes on a whole new meaning when you are running down the sidewalk, your dog on a lease, sweating to the tunes playing in your earbuds, and flossing your teeth to the beat.
On the street I often see shoes. Not a whole set, mind you. Just one at a time. A lone dress shoe or work boot. Sometimes a flip flop or sport shoe. These sightings could also be attributed to children in cars with an open window, but why are they always adult shoes?
Guys with pickup trucks often throw things into the backend and expect them to stay put, or leave them on the bumper and forget to put them inside. With all the pot holes and rough roads these days, I imagine some of that gear is launched into the air and onto the asphalt, and the owner is left bereft with half of a two-hundred-dollar pair of boots.
E cigarettes are the new litterbug’s delight. I see them tossed all the time. When I was a kid, there was a cartoon owl that told us to “give a hoot, don’t pollute.” Kids were taught to pick up their trash and clean their spaces. And this was before children were indoctrinated into the global warming, cooling, end of world climate change cult like they are now. We were just taught to take care of our own messes, responsibly. The streets were a lot cleaner when personal responsibility was a thing.
We’ve probably all lost things along the road at one time or another. My dad put his Bible on top of the car when he was talking to someone after church once and forgot it. I like to think someone found it who didn’t have one and ended up reading about God’s love for them.
Lost or thrown, the objects we leave behind tell a story. Whether it’s our poor taste in shoes, our personal hygiene, or our bad habits, these things can clue us in to the person who dropped them.
That’s why I like reading and writing mysteries. Every mystery novel is sprinkled with clues as to who did it. You just have to notice them.
I see discarded or lost items and my mind starts whirling, imagining scenarios. Or as Sherlock Holmes said, “The game is afoot.” (I wonder if he’d just found a lost boot.)