I Love Trash

While walking down to the mailboxes at the end of our road H picked up one of those disposable dental floss picks that are currently all the rage in oral hygiene.
Kids pick up everything - that's every little thing. They are so proud of what they collect too. Especially those hair elastics that are always turning up. They are perceived as so useful for Mommy. And those tiny plastic barrettes in pastel colors shaped like bows and butterflies, which my four year old's female contemporaries seem to lose in astonishing numbers. I am often presented with a heartfelt, "I picked this up off the street to give to you, Mommy."
Once there was the thing that I can't name that C tried to pick up in the library parking lot when he was about the same age H is now. I'm pleased today's youth are using reliable protection, but please, please once you're finished, don't leave them in the parking lot of the library! Think of all the horrified mothers of small children. I nearly yanked my son's arm out of his socket dragging him in the other direction while he cried over the injustice of it all.
"I just want to put it in the trash, Mommy!"
On our Friday walk, C picked up an expensive-looking bracelet which he returned to the people who lived in the house at the top of the closest driveway on Beebe Acres Road.
"This belongs to my mother," said the grateful woman who answered the door.
Further up the road he spied a big rubber band which he was equally thrilled to gather up, proving that it doesn't matter whether the found item is a priceless diamond tennis bracelet or a dime-a-dozen rubber band; it's the thrill of the discovery that matters and not the physical properties of what's found. Unless, as previously mentioned, it's something that could be considered useful. Next he spied a large bolt: "Won't Daddy be happy when he I give him this," he beamed.
I guess Ken is incapable of shopping for nuts, bolts, screws, and nails, in much the same way C imagines I can only acquire hair elastics and barrettes from off the street.

song: I Love Trash • artist: Oscar the Grouch