A few days ago I found a nickel on the ground near the park my wife and I walk. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I then had to change pockets because it was clinking against my phone, making an annoying sound. I realized then that I don’t tend to walk with change in my pocket very often. At home, I put it in my drawer that I keep my keys in, where I also put loose change. I noticed that I didn’t have any change in there and haven’t for a while. I don’t walk around with coins, I don’t pay for things with cash, and I don’t find lost change nearly as much as I used to in the past.

What I do see that I never used to is lost and dropped masks. They litter the floor like abandoned cigarette butts, easily noticed and equally as unappealing. I don’t want to see them, but I also have no desire to touch them in order to throw them away. Because they are much larger than cigarette butts, they are even more noticeable, and they seem to be everywhere.

Yesterday the grounds crew were cutting the grass and weed whacking around the school and one of them brought in a drone that fell out of a tree. He brought it in and said maybe a student had lost it. But the reality is that it probably belonged to someone in the community and I’ll have no way of knowing who it belongs to or how to get it back to them?

20 years ago lost coins and cigarette butts were items lost and dropped by people. Now it’s drones and masks. What will it be in another 20 years?