Lost & Found: What Is All This Stuff?

Here’s the deal. When you write a blog about running and the stuff you find while running and you don’t find anything while running, well, you don’t have much to write about. I mean, really it’s more about the finding than the running. Real runners can write about running. They know what they’re talking about. They have a passion for running that likely inspires their prose. Not so, I.

I’m a classically trained bullshit artist. OK, not really classically trained. All right, not really an artist. I earned my B.A. in B.S. from WIU. You want alphabet soup, I can serve up a steady diet for you. Call it Mumbo Jumbo Gumbo – a Midwestern variation on a Southern specialty.

So I did find something today on my little run. A bundle of cans (they add up and put a few extra dollars in my wallet every month or so) is the usual. Sometimes I find something cool and useful, like a pair of shorts or a wrench or a tire iron. Other times it’s a pure piece of trash, but an interesting bit of flotsam at that. Today it was a pair of pink plastic fashion shades, the kind with slats across the top of the frames like louvers, no lenses. The temples were broken off, one lying nearby, the other unseen.

I picked up the busted shades because I had to have something to show for this run besides bulging thighs and calves. As is often the case when I find miscellany like this I thought, “maybe this will work as clever wall art.” Like the cute photo frame around the peephole on the door in Monica and Rachel’s apartment on “Friends.” I even thought of that. Nah, it looks stupid. Maybe just on the wall somewhere to make the pink stick out against the white. Too many other pieces of real art on the wall.

So do the frames go in my old Scout haversack with the rest of the random detritus I haven’t been able to part with or put to use? The bag is full of stuff without a purpose: two big bras, a broken Airsoft pistol, a single thigh-high suede boot, several matchless gloves, three plastic candy cane decorations, a Rock Falls Rockets plastic mini basketball. I’m not exactly a hoarder – all this crap fits in a 1950s-era Boy Scout knapsack, with room to spare.

Well, that doesn’t count the plastic grocery sack full of cigarette hard packs I thought I’d use to create some sort of social-message art – a skull and crossbones or something. That bag is out of storage now and on its way to the garbage. I don’t think the art is gonna happen. Not my outlet.

The pink shades? After I photographed my stash, they joined two pairs (better, Mum?) of 3-D glasses (one from 2011’s crappy “Conan” remake and one from this year’s mediocre “Hobbit” entry) on my TV stand. I’m sure they’ll all find their way to the trash or back to the theater for recycling, but for now they’re just part of my surroundings. And I don’t know why. Something else to work on – after this year’s resolutions are well in hand.

Today's Stats

Temp: 25 degrees F

Distance: 3.76 miles

Weekly Total: 10.86 miles

Treasure: 21 cans; 1 pair pink fashion shades.

iPod Playlist (iPod on Shuffle):

Thunderbird – ZZ Top

Stay the Night – Chicago

A Day in the Life – The Beatles

Speech: Brian Epstein (From The Beatles Anthology 3)

4:37 AM (Arabs With Knives & West German Skiers)

I Can’t Get Started – Charlie Parker