Things they dropped

When Cooper and I moved into our small place in Santa Rosa, it was November and most of our morning walks were in the dark.  We were oblivious to what was around us, just walking to wake up and get back to the house to either eat food (Cooper) or leave again for work (me.)   These days, however, as the light appears earlier each day, I am paying more attention to things scattered about the sidewalks and streets and there is an astounding variety of what people have tossed or dropped or deliberately left.  Over the past two weeks we have seen the following, and more:


Fast-food wrappers and miscellaneous liquor bottles, of course, but also many kinds of food products:  a half-eaten Safeway chocolate layer cake in the clear plastic Safeway dome, plastic fork included, carefully placed next to a telephone pole.  Plastic grocery bag containing an unopened package of tortillas, some tomatoes, a plastic bear with clover honey.  A neat pile of about 20 small packets of ketchup.  Six-pack of small plastic containers of applesauce, unopened.  A glazed donut, unbitten. Two jars of baby food, half used, sitting upright near a chain-link fence.  Brown paper grocery bag containing an empty six pack of Sam Adams beer, all bottles in the six pack carrier, so neat and tidy, right next to an open dumpster.


Clothing items:  ragged jeans, dirty jacket.  One Ked's tennis shoe in decent shape. A kid's pink and green knit glove.  A plastic bag spilling out toddler-size shirts, not in fine repair, perhaps rejected from Goodwill.  In a parking lot behind a local bar, a pair of lacy red panties. Several pairs of sunglasses, some whole, most not.  A watchband. A striped tie, in good shape, tied around a fence post.  Many knit caps.  A sad, dirty handmade neck scarf, crumpled on the sidewalk. 


Personal items:  oddly, several toothbrushes.  Nice looking hair brush.  Mean looking broken combs.  Half empty tube of lube (not near the red panties, alas.)  Dental floss, still wrapped as if just bought from the drugstore, must have fallen out of a bag.  Half finished packets of pocketsize Kleenex.  Many scuffed hair clips and ratty scrunchies. A cheap plastic ring near a torn, wet coloring book.


Random stuff:  a headless Barbie doll and the red, smiling head from an Elmo doll, not near each other.  Hubcaps. Dog collar. Address book run over many times.  Several paperback books, mostly tattered, most without covers, spotted a few blocks from the local high school, don't know if there's a connection.  A baseball mitt, (almost picked it up,)  also near the high school.  Broken crayons, broken pieces of chalk.  An old coffee mug on a curb. Sometimes I see a photograph lying on the sidewalk or in the weeds and I wonder who it is, who lost it.


So many people, so many stories, so many things cast off.  Makes you wonder why.

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