The rest of the story

When I'm driving to work or out for a run, I'll see things or people as I pass by. But I never know why those people or things are there, what happened that they should be there. And I always kind of wonder about that (and then I make up stories about them).

For example, I almost always see a very fit older man, probably in his late 60s but incredibly fit, running east along 103rd Street when I drive to work. I mean he just flies over the hills and I've decided that he's probably an ultra marathon runner.

This morning on my run, I saw bits of broken mirror, then a piece of car chrome (not enough there to tell what it had been), then a side mirror and then a bit of broken off utility pole. OK so someone had an accident but maybe not very bad, and instead of calling it in, the driver just drove off without that side mirror.

Sunday on my run, I saw a crumpled up empty Marlboro pack, the kind with the gold label. I immediately judged the smoker for being a litter bug, and then felt entirely justified less than half a block later when I saw the discarded cigarette butt. Jerk.

Another day on another run, I saw the front face cover from a cell phone. It wasn't from an iPhone, it was pretty clearly from a very inexpensive clam shell model, so then I felt sorry for the person because maybe that was the only cell phone they could afford.

And yard sale/garage sale/estate sale signs. My goodness there are lots of those in KC. How on earth do people end up with so much junk and who on earth buys their crap?

Oh and the real estate signs. There's a really nice house on my running route, sits on a lake and is probably a cool half a million, no wait I was wrong. I just looked it up. It's $1.5 million, has four bedrooms and five bathrooms and is just over 5k square feet. It's been for sale since we moved into our house. This spring I saw a sign for a graduation party in their yard so my story about the sellers is that they're now empty nesters and have no need for this enormous house. No wait, maybe they want to move to some more exotic location. Hmm I can see that I need to develop this story line a little more.