October 24th, 2017

Mailbox Down!

It's not our mailbox.  This is the mailbox of a house near us though and on my walk yesterday I noticed that it was lying on the ground and not looking to be in good shape.  I wonder what happened.

That's the thing with me y'see.  I always wonder.  I am curious.  I want to know.  I suppose I'm nosy.  But it happens every time, I see something that is out of the ordinary, and anachronism, something that shouldn't be as it is and the question pops into my head, "How did this come to be?"

Was it hit by a car much like our mailbox was?  Was it kids with a baseball bat knocking it off it's feet?  Was it simply time and weather that toppled it? 

It's the same sort of thing that crossed my mind the other day when I saw a shoe on the side of the road. One shoe. Just one.  It was a left sneaker to be specific, scuffed up white and goodly sized, not a child's shoe at all.  And there it lay, laces outstretched as if they tried to break it's fall.  How does an adult sized person lose one shoe?  I know how a child can.  As a toddler, my sister once threw a brand new pair of shoes off of a train.  She tugged them off her feet, one shoe at a time and dropped first the left and then the right out the open window waving bye-bye all the while.  Afterwards, she was looking around her seat as if searching for something else to toss before the discovery of the missing shoes happened.  It wasn't pretty.  Do you suppose it was the same sort of situation?  A car driving by and a child in the backseat amusing itself by tossing things out the window?  Or maybe the adult, for some reason left the shoes on the roof of the car and then absently drove off flinging one shoe onto that particular road?  Or maybe the person was being chased by an escaped tiger and literally ran out of their shoe?  I wouldn't stop to pick it up if I were being chased by a wild animal, would you?

Recently I noticed in the grocery store a stuffed duck in the produce section.  It was nestled into the yams as if it were a nest.  There was no one in the produce section but me at that time and it wasn't my duck.  I envision another restless toddler tossing her toys around as her parent made vegetable selections and assuming that the duck would be returned to her. Or maybe a slightly older sibling teasingly hid the toy planning to retrieve it only to have Mama or Daddy urging them to hurry along.  I doubt the duck arrived there under it's own power!  I can only imagine what life was like in that household later when the duck needed to be there at bedtime and could not be found.

Don't you wonder about these things?  Have you ever seen, for example, one earring in a parking lot?  Just one.  Well earrings fall off, sure, but I wonder about the person who  was wearing it?  Was it after an evening out?  Or before the evening began?  It makes a difference.  On the way home, yes it's a shame to have lost an earring but nobody is going to notice after the fact.  On the way in however, people will notice and be wondering why that woman is wearing only one earring? Is it a new fashion ? A funky  trend?  Or is it a political statement?  Or did she lose the earring in a tussle...oh I hope that wasn't the case.  But it does make me curious and I wish I knew the truth of it.

Truth can be elusive.  There are universal truths. There are factual truths and hidden truths. There are truths of perspective and there are truths of convenience.   It could be a half-truth, a sworn truth or the truth and nothing but the truth.  It could be an educated truth, or mid-guided truth or a truth of indoctrination.  Perhaps an informed truth, an equally mis-informed truth or a superstitious truth. And yet, in the mind of the speaker it's still the truth.  I have to wade through all of it to learn the actual truth which is the rarest and most important truth of all.  And I want to know it.