it happens, has happened, to you and to everyone. a person walking ahead of you drops something unknowingly. the question is what do you do? simple question really. what do you do? do you pick it up? do you call out, however uncharacteristically perhaps, and draw their attention to it? do you pretend not to notice? do you laugh out loud and find your day instantly brightened? there is no wrong answer. you are not being graded… not sure? thinking “it depends”? wondering “well, what did the person drop”? alright, fair enough…

it’s a glove. cold winter morning, turning into a revolving door, someone drops it. do you pick up your step and try to return it to them with a tap on the shoulder maybe? it’s a leather glove. it has chestnut colored fur poking out of the opening. do you pick it up? it’s expensive looking. do you call out? it’s palm side down. do you look at it only momentarily, like it were a chinese menu stuck to the pavement, and walk right by? it’s a woman who dropped it incidentally. does that matter at all? she’s young, pretty. if your into women you find her attractive. reaction? if your a woman yourself you think she looks nice enough, not too pretty, not excessively well dressed. what do you do? not sure?
o.k. she’s elderly. 80 years old at least. half hobbled. scholiosis. shabby coat. does sympathy or some notion of chivalry enter into your decision? hmmmm… she’s not old. no, she’s middle aged. she looks like a real bitch. small featured, bit of a sneer, cold. she looks rich. she looks like a girl who cuckolded you in 10th grade. do negative associations play any part? maybe?
alright you pissed off when you hit the sack the night before. bit of a cold and a fight with your significant other. you were rushed and didn’t watch the weather report, now your freezing. you see the glove hit the ground, your eyes are right on it. it’s a tiny rainbow colored mitten with a hello kitty pom-pom on the end. do you give a shit? it’s raining a bit. the small kid who dropped it has yellow rain boots on. she’s adorable. you pick it up right? your stock is down, you’re late, you’re sterile and can never have children of your own. she is small and angelic and you can see the other glove poking out of her pocket…
o.k. the kids not cute, the kid is loud mouthed and obnoxious, teasing a smaller child. do you laugh inwardly when you see the glove fall, thinking “karma, hahaha justice”. maybe you feel a small pang for him but are of the opinion small losses are a large part of life, get used to it, learn it now… who knows? there’s the glove. what exactly do you do? possibly you see a mitten, palm up in a puddle and find it somehow poetic? you watch it as you walk past never even noticing it’s owner, it having been dropped never even crossing your mind? it’s only a moment in time.
what if it’s not a glove at all but something else entirely? is there a sliding value scale wholly dependent on your feelings, associations, mood, biases, etc? is it based on the items monetary value? is it based on the items usefulness or replaceablity? if the person drops a pice of trash, lets say, do you call them out on it? is it in fact dependent on the item itself or the person who drops it? is it a combination of the two? what if it’s an old man who drops a snapshot? what if it’s a guy in a suit who drops an envelope? how about a cop who drops a slip of paper? a krishna who drops a pamphlet? a woman in scrubs who drops a metrocard? a kid who drops a notebook? a bum who drops a plastic bag? what happens in that fraction of a second, that makes you decide?
i ask because though i am a staunch holder of doors, a religious giver of cigarettes and occasional giver of change, a happy offerer of directions, and am unfailing at allowing people to exit the subway before entering, there are invisible lines of goodwill i rarely cross, and i wonder why. for instance i never accept a circular, going so far as to curse the offerer with an acerbic “get the fuck out of here”. i rarely hold an elevator, often laughing giddily to myself, silently taunting the people who arrived too late. also i stand my ground and curse people who try to come down on the right side of the subway stairs, saying things like “your a genius”, or “haven’t learned to us the stairs yet huh?” where are the lines and what is the mechanism? is it just the balance of things?
last week someone outside my office dropped a glove. i said nothing, but someone else who noticed spoke up, and the glove was returned. clearly a “not my problem” response on my part. later that same day, as i sat outside smoking, a guy walking past dropped a piece of trash (a wrapper or napkin or something) he looked down at it as he dropped it, and decided to leave it there. i watched him, and though i have, of course, littered my self, the act of looking at the thing he dropped, seeing that it was trash, and deciding to leave it there, struck me as particularly assholish. in an uncharacteristic moment of moral superiority i went over to pick it up and throw it away. don’t ask me why, perhaps penance for the glove thing, i have no idea. as i stooped down to pick it up i saw that it was actually a tiny bundle of trash and in the center of it was a dollar bill. now i drop change sometimes and just leave it there, laziness, small gesture of disdain toward our lust for money, whatever, but this guy clearly thought he’d only dropped trash and left it. “haha, dickhead.” i kept the dollar of course, fee for garbage collection. i had a good laugh and wondered about justice. i also wondered though weather i’d have returned it had it not been for the garbage thing, had he just dropped a dollar? most likely. or what if he’d pulled the asshole move and i found a fiver inside? or a twenty? would a larger bill be sufficient to override my annoyance with the guy? what if it were a fifty? would i just think the justice of it were even a greater justice? or at a certain value would the fine no longer befit the crime? don’t know. just curious.