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Tales from the lost and found
Unclaimed items range from basic to bizarre
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
If you're looking for that snapshot of your favorite frog and tadpoles, check the library!
Because that's just one of the items still waiting in the lost and found at the Dayton-Metro Library's Wilmington-Stroop branch.
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"The most common thing we find when people return books is photos," reports Stephanie Bange, the branch's children's librarian. "People use them for bookmarks."
Photos between the pages are so common, in fact, that the library has a fat album filled with snapshots waiting to be reunited with their families. There are photos of toddlers and graduates, newlyweds and softball teams.
One shows a little girl and a pair of cats sitting in front of a barn.
"Mom and Dad took this picture when they got back from Florida," says the inscription on the back reads, under the heading, "Sarah 1980."
The frog photo, which also shows two tadpoles and something that might be a dead crawfish, is inscribed:
"I love you KonKon. I don't have a picture of me. This'll have to do!!!"
But if photos make up the bulk of lost and found, they are by no means the whole picture. Shopping lists, unpaid bills, uncashed paychecks and laminated obituaries turn up regularly.
"I keep waiting for the $50 bill," says Bange, before recalling that a co-worker actually did come across a $50 bill a few years ago. Her most memorable find, unfortunately, was several years ago when she was a student teacher in Louisiana and library books still had pockets for check-out cards inside their covers. Tucked into one returned book was a used chaw of tobacco.
"That was the grossest thing I've ever seen," she declares.
12 items or less: at the grocery
Most of the items that turn up in a grocery store's lost and found are understandable: gloves, keys, ATM cards, sunglasses. But some are not.
At the Dorothy Lane Market in Oakwood, for instance, they've found wedding rings in the produce bins, cell-phone adapters at the cash register and tire rims in the parking lot.
"Something I find kind of humorous is when we find one child's shoe," observes DLM service booth employee Bev Tangeman. "If a child comes into the store with two shoes and leaves with one, you'd think the parents would look for it."
By the same token, but at the other end of the age spectrum, are forgotten canes.
"Gosh," Tangeman wonders, "if they needed a cane to help them walk in, wouldn't you think they'd need a cane to help them get back to their car?"
Crowd pleasers: at arenas
More puzzling than one child's shoe, perhaps, are the lone adult shoes that frequently turn up in the lost and found box at Hara Arena in Trotwood. Community affairs director Karen Wampler is mystified by those, although there is a pattern to some of the other detritus.
"Our lost-and-found items are in layers, so it's sort of like an archaelogical dig," she explains. "Right now, we have the pink layer from the My Little Pony show; little princess purses and things like that. Then there are the John Deere hats and headphones from the truck pull. On top we have the black layer — leather belts, leather wrist bands, T-shirts and bandannas — from the Disturbed concert."
Probably not from a heavy-metal concert, however, was the set of false teeth left at the arena but eventually reunited with its owner's mouth.
Dentures and retainers also have turned up in the lost and found at the University of Dayton Arena, but secretary Mollie Cummins' favorite is the rosary that was left following a Flyers' basketball game.
"I'm sure it was helpful," she adds.
Carry-ons and whatnot: airport
When most people put the words "lost" and "airport" together, they're usually thinking about luggage. But Sharon Sears, marketing and public relations manager at Dayton International Airport, thinks driver's licenses and credit cards.
"Those are the most common things," she says. "But in 22 years I've seen some pretty unusual things. A lot of canes and crutches. We always laugh and say it's another airport miracle; it's so easy to get through our airport people no longer even need their crutches."
But she has no explanation at all for the most unusual item left at one of the gates.
"I remember years and years ago that an artificial arm was turned in," she relates. "That would be something I think you would miss. I'd love to know the story behind that one."
No class: schools
And just about any elementary school's lost and found will overflow with misplaced gloves, scarves, sweaters and single shoes. But one local school, which will remain nameless to avert massive parental embarrassment, reports finding a pair of left-behind handcuffs a few years ago.
Not the kind of handcuffs that would belong to a person wearing a badge. The kind of handcuffs that might belong by a person wearing fishnet stockings and a black leather bustier. They were red and furry.
And, not surprisingly, they went unclaimed.
Saving the page with some odd and not so odd items ...
Can't find a bookmark to keep track of where you stopped reading? There are plenty of alternatives. According to a list compled by Mark Willis, community relations manager for Dayton Metro Library, here are some of the items returned inside books:
pair of scissors
$100 savings bond
toothpicks
airline boarding pass
rattan coaster
leaves
candy wrappers
paintbrush
sticks of gum
pens
Olympics tickets
bobby pins
cheese
and, everybody's favorite:
a slice of uncooked bacon
Contact this writer at (937) 225-2439 or at dlstewart@DaytonDailyNews.com.
