Trying to be Helpful

This morning, I drove by the mailbox as the driver was putting the mail into the slots for the houses in my area. A letter carrier was also collecting her bundle of mail from the truck and starting out on her route. As she started up the block, I saw something drop from her hand. From where I sat, it looked like a chain with keys. She didn't seem to notice, so I stopped my car, turned it around in the intersection, pulled over to the side, got out, and . . . no, it wasn't keys at all.

Four elastics. Four wide elastic bands--the kind used to bundle mail together for the carriers.

Hmm. The truth of what had happened dawned on me. Those elastics were not dropped by accident. The carrier unbundled her mail and THREW them on the ground. I picked them up, got back in my car, and continued on my errand run.

Thinking back over this, I wonder now how that letter carrier thought those elastics were going to be useful there in the snow. Or how they would be "recycled" through the layers of pavement once spring came and the snow melted away, to return to the earth from whence they came.

I wonder.

'Twas the Night Before Christmas