Toy Story

It is Sunday night, around 10 pm. The garbage men come earlier than I get up in the morning, so I have to make sure all the trash is out at the curb tonight. My neighbors bought a house on the other side of town and moved a few days ago. They used their garage primarily for storage so naturally there was a huge pile, along side the trash cans, of much of what they had stowed away in keeping for some imaginary 'other day'. As I walked the week's last bag of trash out to the side of the road, I noticed something laying among the carpet remnants and Hefty sacks. It was a stuffed dog. My neighbors had two small boys, one three years old and one less than a year, and I remember peeking into their garage to see mountains of unused toys. I guessed they assumed the boys were young enough that they'd never miss a few musty, beat-up toys, too worn to worry about taking along to the new home. I knew it went straight from storage in the garage out to the trash pile.

Despite the fact that I was in my t-shirt and it was 40 degrees out with a stiff 20 mph wind and starting to drizzle, I picked up that poor doomed toy dog and hugged it for a while. Standing there shivering, I gave it the proper goodbye that some little boy never had the chance to. It'll be gone by the time I get up tomorrow.