About a month ago I wrote a post about a handful of objects I found out on a run, including a full set of fairy wings. Let me see if I can find it again. Oh yes, here it is.  Click the link to read it again. Or for the first time.

Yesterday’s run was another surplus of wonder. It was just the average 4-miler. No big deal. Same old neighborhood route. Other than unseasonably warm it was a typical December morning. Along mile one I found a pack of cigarettes. Unlike my previous post I did not assume this gift was left by fairies. Or miniature cowboys. Or bellydancers. I hope, and I mean really, really hope it was ditched by a smoker who finally said enough is enough. I hope someone decided to go cold turkey and chucked his or her last pack. Or perhaps he or she really did lose them but after discovering the cigarettes gone, decided it was the perfect time to quit.

Being a hardcore rabid anti-smokist I didn’t want to touch them but I couldn’t take the chance that someone else would find them and smoke them. I plucked them off the sidewalk with two fingers and tossed them into the dumpster behind the funeral home. I hope the 20 seconds it took me to remove the temptation will be someone else’s  first 20 minutes of non-smoking.

At mile two I found a wheel from a toy truck. It was lying in the street just outside the playground fence of the Catholic daycare. I thought for sure it must have come from some of the toys I see out on the playground when the Catholic tots are out there burning off Catholic energy. But there were no tots playing that day. No toys. No little trucks up on blocks in the yard. The wheel was too big to be a choking hazard so I tossed it back over the playground fence. Perhaps it would be reunited with the broken-down truck that must now be up on a Catholic shelf like Weezy and Woody in Toy Story 2. One of the nuns would surely restore the rig and Catholic joy would return to ranks of the daycare.

I drive by this daycare on my way home from work every day. There are usually a few tots still out there playing, waiting for Mom or Dad to get off work. I’ll slow down on Monday and see if one of the nuns found the wheel on a safety sweep of the playground. I will look for the blissfully happy Catholic tot playing with a toy truck made whole. I will imagine that I helped facilitate his or her little miracle.

Along mile three I found two large unopened cans of Bruce’s Yams.

The cans were sitting together, labels facing the street, near an intersection. Not near a home. Not near a store. Not near anywhere the homeless might sleep, cook, or store their canned goods. Just two cans of yams sitting atop the utility cover of a water shut-off valve, wet with morning dew. I decided to leave them there. Mostly because canned yams taste like cans. But also because it felt like these yams were someone else’s treasure to find. Maybe someone hungry. Maybe someone who knows someone hungry. Maybe it would be the next guy or gal to shut off the water or check the meter.

Then halfway through mile four I found this tiny silver earring.

This time I did suspect the fairies. I assumed it was a gift for the Mean Santa I inherited from my mother-in-law when I married The Chef. Do you remember Mean Santa? At the time there was no way for dear old MIL to know I never believed in Santa (ever) and that I’d likely never bond with this creature. But there was also no way for me to know that this little red devil would grow on me.

It helps that he doesn’t look jolly. From certain angles he looks angry/menacing. From other angles he looks stoned. He’s wearing blue eye shadow and red lipstick and the white paint on his pompadour is wearing off. His mustache appears to be growing straight out of his nostrils. He’s creepy. But I look forward to releasing him from his dark storage each year.

The Chef was afraid of Mean Santa when he was a kid. At just over two feet tall he really does look more like a leprechaun than a Santa Claus. Perhaps Over the years I’ve grown fond of Mean Santa, especially after MIL died and I found a bajillion baby/little kiddo pictures of The Chef posing with Mean Santa. The Chef did not smile in any of those pictures. The fairies must have known that Mean Santa needed some edgy bling.

Back before the Yule tradition was christianized into Christmas, Santa was allegedly the god Odin. Odin became Father Christmas. Father Christmas became Santa. Sometime before The Chef and were I born Santa became this weird hairy leprechaun wearing makeup. I’ve embraced him fully in all his incarnations and will offer him this tiny gift of silver in a heathen version of the The Little Drummer Boy. I’ll be The Transmittal Runner Girl. Rum pum pum pum.

Emphasis on the rum.