My OperaLost and Found
Tuesday, May 29, 2007 7:07:56 PM
FoundOnce while traveling through southern Ohio, we noticed signs advertising the "Smallest Little Church in Ohio!" Naturally we had to stop and check it out. Theological/philosophical issues aside ("the smallest church is right inside your heart"), it's a pretty small church alright. Although really they ought to market themselves better; this place is billed the smallest church in the world and actually appears to be slightly bigger.
Anyway, inside the SLTIO, sitting on a pew, was a perfectly good digital video camcorder. Our honest natures (and the larger-than-life bleeding Jesus wincing at us from four feet away) precluded any cries of "woohoo, free camcorder!" But we had no particular way of finding the owner, who was probably just passing through and getting 70 miles further away with each passing hour. So we just left it. (A couple hundred miles later we wished we'd recorded a little message to any would be thieves: "Congrats on your new stolen camera. Jesus weeps for you-- look!" But it was too late.)
Lost
Last week while en route to a family party, and running a bit late, we drove past a HUGE flea market/garage sale at a local church. Now, driving my wife past such a thing and not stopping would be a little like driving a shark past GreatbigbucketsofchumLand and not stopping. So we set a ten minute time limit and each charged around looking for our respective scores: me, a supercool electronic thingama-stereo-powertool/kitchen gadget, preferable with naked ladies on the box; her, some scrap of fabric that she can box up and give as a Christmas present to a friend who, amazingly, won't open it up and say, "Why did you give me a little scrap of fabric as a Christmas present?" but will actually genuinely enjoy it. But I digress.
Anyway after ten minutes we raced back to the car and discovered that my keys were not on my person. Presumably I'd put them down on one of 100 tables loaded with junk, or maybe I'd dropped them somewhere on the acre of tall grass. After my strategy of turning beet red and mumbling while kicking the grass for half an hour didn't work, we checked the hot dog table in the middle of the yard (on some strange mutual assumption that surely the hot dog people must be in charge), and got our keys back, lickety split. After Paying it Forward in the form of buying a hotdog for a random flea-marketer, we were on the road.
Found again
Yesterday while driving home, my wife, who bless-her-soul can spot a stray animal from a thousand yards in the dark, got a little white dog in her sights. Since we were in a fairly un-residential neighborhood, we stopped and picked her up, and now she's living in our house.
We figure she belongs to someone, being really well trained and all. And fortunately, hopefully, there's only a couple places you'd expect people to check for a lost dog. The city kennel, the animal warden, Lay-Z-Bones Bar and Lounge, etc. We put in calls to these folks, but since it was a holiday weekend, two days have elapsed between the find and actually being able to tell anyone about it. And, it's all too possible that we'll miss each other even if both of us is trying to locate the other.
I have a dream...
It seems like "lost and found" would be a perfect web application for the Internet. There's a number of sites that do lost-and-found, but none of them have much traffic, and most of the ads are for dogs and cats. People put a lot more effort into reuniting a pet with its owner, than, say, a camcorder. But I bet there's thousands of little lost-and-found counters at airports, libraries, stores, bus depots, etc, just full of things that people don't know where they were when they lost it, and millions of people who lost something but give up when they can't find it in a few minutes.
Wouldn't it be nice if there were an internet equivalent of the hot-dog stand? Anyone who found something lying around could register it quick and free, and anyone who lost anything would know right where to go. Maybe if they charged $1 to hook up a loser with a finder, it could be the next eBay...
Hey buddy, you wanna buy a dog?
Oh yeah. We've got this dog, see? And we're pretty doubtful anyone will claim her. She's a chihuahua we think, and weighs maybe six pounds. Completely house-trained, she runs to the door and drags her butt around when it's time to go out, and hasn't had a single accident yet. We've yet to hear her make a single noise. She gets all happy whenever any human comes in the room, and seems just as content to jump up in your lap as to lay in the corner (though honestly she seems to much prefer being on your lap). If she isn't claimed by week's end, we're going to start trying to foist her on our friends and family, so be warned. If you know anyone who needs a small, quiet, affectionate, trained, cute little dog, she's free to a good home. We'll even spring for the little "if found, please call..." tag.
Lagged2Death # Friday, June 1, 2007 1:57:25 AM
Craigslist does lost and found, and I guess it's free to post. Which you guys almost certainly knew already, sorry. Many people use it quite seriously, others less so.