Everything Has A Backstory...

Casey: I gather it went well.

Dan: You know sometimes it's worth it, taking all the pies in the face. Sometimes you come through it feeling good.

Casey: Yes.

Dan: And how was your day?

Casey: Sometimes you just stand there, hip deep in pie.

-from the show "Sports Night" - Season 1, Episode 15: "Dana and the Deep Blue Sea"

Have you ever noticed the random abandoned items along the road?

Yesterday I went to Barnes & Noble after work as part of my errands (this was more of a selfish errand since I wanted to get "All You Need is Kill" by Hiroshi Sakurazaka - the book the movie "Edge of Tomorrow" was based off of. There's also a graphic novel, but I chose the paperback instead).

In any case, I parked in the front of the building, and as I was walking up the curb along the store's front window to the door, I saw what from a distance looked like a tiny child's toy in the shape of a turtle but ended up being a pair of children's white bobby socks tucked into each other (you know, like you do when putting laundry away).

Now the socks could have fallen out of a stroller earlier in the day or a mommy's diaper bag or an irate child could have just flung them off in a tantrum (cuffing them together, of course, as most infants are wont to do) declaring socks are evil and they shall not be anywhere near their feet.

Anyway, moving on...

I've just noticed a lot more lately the stuff discarded and forgotten as I go about my life in this world. In the past few weeks, I've seen socks, caps, bags, shoes... it's as if someone is stripping as they go on a walkabout.

Other scrapped items I've seen of the more grandiose scale are couches, bails of hay, washers and dryers, large car parts, cars, televisions, and too many more to mention, but trust me, if you can imagine it, it's been left somewhere in the middle of nowhere... or an often sped down stretch of concrete that a driver might catch out of the corner of their eye and thinking Was that a flamingo standing next to a wagon wheel?

Lately I've been wondering how those items get where they end up and what choice(s) was/were made to have them end up there? Did someone wake up one morning and say, "I think I'll put my recliner on the freeway." Did they make that decision because the recliner wronged them in some way? Did they fall in love with a brand new, more top of the line recliner? Did they start dating someone that didn't like the recliner eventually having the comfy chair losing out to "either the chair goes or I go" scenario.

I don't know. Maybe it's the writer part of my brain or my morbid sense of humor/curiosity. Maybe both parts are one in the same... or at least close knit siblings to one another.

The infamous visual oddity that I always see and wonder about are the tied together pair of shoes hanging from the telephone wire. I can understand chucking a shoe in an emotional state to either vent some steam or in hopes of beaning someone in the noggin, but taking the time to tie them together and then lasso them over the wire like a grappling hook with no tether?

I'd heard from someone once that they heard from someone else it was to mark where drug dealers lived - for their customers, I guess. Not sure how valid that is, or if it's fact, how popular that notion is, but you'd think cops would catch on by now that all their drug busts have shoes hanging nearby.

I like stories, and these tossed away items get the wheels in my mind turning as to how they go there - what was their story.

Like those children's socks in front of the bookstore.

I imagine a mother taking them off her child, cuffing them together before tucking them into her bag or storage bin of the carriage. It's a warm day, and she doesn't want her child to be overheated. Once away from the child, the socks - now Siamese twin socks joined at the head and neck - struggle together to wiggle from the secure spot in the carriage and leap to freedom, away from that terrible child that never loved them away - always kicking them off in its sleep, yanking on them and stretching them apart while laying on its back and curling its feet toward its face. The worst was when it would yank them off their feet and shove them in its mouth. Oh the horror! No sock should EVER have to go through that. So after many hours of therapy with their therapist (Blanky and Mr. Bear), they decided to take their lives into their own hands and free themselves from the tyranny of vicious little children who have no respect for their adolescent hosiery.

...
...
...

Or something like that. *innocent grin/blink blink*

Later my lovelies.

Have Goodness!
Rae