Highway scavenger hunt – Shoes

Taking a pause from road trip posts to ponder highway debris. Shoes are the most common item Gary and I see on our adventures. But honestly, I could write a whole blog about items left along the highway. Meh, I have enough blogs. Besides, this type of post fits right into our silly adventures. Now, about those shoes....

What's up with all the shoes on the side of the highway?

Did you ever notice that it's usually a single shoe?

What happened to the other half of the pair?

Is it out there somewhere searching for it's mate?

Is it hanging from a telephone line, the victim of a playground battle?

Nah, I guess the other shoe would be needed for balance, wouldn't it?

Anyway, it does make you wonder who in the heck is tossing all these random shoes out the car window, doesn't it?

The nuns at my Catholic grade school probably would have collected them for children in third world countries. I'm picturing impoverished people running around with mismatched shoes. I know. Funny/not funny. But still......

“And they'd be grateful to have them,” says Sister Mary Virgo, shaking her finger at the brainwashed, long forgotten, good little Catholic girl in my head.

Discarded highway shoes are kind of like pennies, aren't they? They add up.

Once when I was a kid, I made it my (also long forgotten) goal to always pick up found pennies, because who knows? I might find a hundred dollars worth in my lifetime. A hundred dollars was a huge sum for me to think of back then.

Similarly, if I picked up all the shoes I've seen along the side of the road since I was a young child, well, that would be a lot of shoes. Might even find a match eventually. Stranger things have happened. Hey, if I included those shoes that kids throw over the telephone lines, at least I'd have some matching pairs.

I wonder what Sister Mary Virgo would do if I showed up at the convent with a truckload of scavenged highway shoes?

Would she send them to the needy like she said she did with our leftover lunchroom sloppy-joes?

At least the shoes aren't as perishable.

In all seriousness, though, I do feel very badly for people in some other countries. Imagine how they would feel about this post. Imagine how they would feel about people so well off that their shoes have become a common, laughable, disposable item. We don't think of ourselves as rich, do we? But in comparison, we're millionaires.

We are so lucky. Or not. Because while shoes are commonplace for us, apparently, mindfulness is in short supply.