The Lost Thing

So you want to hear a story?

Well, I used to know a whole lot of really interesting ones.

Some of them so funny you would laugh yourself unconscious.

Others so terrible, you would never want to repeat them.

Now I can't remember any of those.

So maybe I'll just tell you about the time I found that lost thing.

This all happened many summers ago, down on the beach.

I was as usual working tirelessly on my bottle top collection.

At least until I saw the thing.

It sure wasn't doing much.

It just sat there with a really weird look about it.

You know, a sad, lost sort of look.

Nobody else seemed to notice it was there.

They were all too busy doing other stuff I guess.

Hello?

It turned out to be really friendly.

I played with the thing for most of the afternoon.

It was great fun!

But the whole time I couldn't help feeling that something wasn't quite right.

As the hours slouched by it seemed less and less likely that anyone was coming to take the thing home.

And soon there was no denying the unhappy truth.

It was lost.

I asked a few people if they knew anything about it.

I took the lost thing over to Pete's place.

Pete has an opinion on just about everything.

"Cool," he said.

Pete didn't know what the thing was exactly.

But he said what he always does, that all physical manifestations could be identified emperically.

through careful observation, calibrated measurement, and controlled experimentation.

In the end, Pete just shrugged.

He didn't think the lost thing came from anywhere. It didn't belong anywhere either.

Some things in life are like that, he said.

They're just plain lost.

There was nothing left to do but take the thing home with me.

As for my parents...

I already knew that Mum would be concerned about how filthy its feet were.

That Dad would be worried about all sorts of strange diseases.

They both just wanted me to take it back to where I found it.

"But it's lost!" I said.

Not that that made any difference.