Why Do Lost Objects Stay Lost? A Meditation on Ethics With A Miraculous Twist

I've been thinking about the state of the social compact recently after some incidents with lost articles. Last week I was at an ATM on President's Day and I found an ATM card sitting on the ledge of the machine. "Oh my, that can't be good," I thought. "Surely that person will be ripe for identity theft if that bank card falls in the wrong hands." However, the bank was closed so there was nothing I could do to safeguard the card so I just did my transaction and left it there.
My thought was that the card must not have been there long and maybe the person was on their way back to find the card right this instant. Was that the socially conscious thing to do? What would YOU want someone to do if they found YOUR bank card outside a closed bank? The card only contained a generic Latino name (I kid you not, I think it was "Jose Martinez") with no other means of contacting or identifying them.

What people who find lost articles do with those items always fascinates me. Yesterday I finally got around to having my car's oil changed and while I was waiting I read part of a library book I borrowed from the Glendale-Pasadena Public Library system: Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time. However, when I got home after work I couldn't find the library book anywhere. I'm 99% sure I left the book on the counter of the Alhambra, CA branch of Bridgestone-Firestone Automotive Center. This is pretty shocking to me because I have never ever lost a library book before and I feel awful about it happening now. I'll happily pay whatever the penalty is (it looks like it is $7 plus a replacement cost for the book of $15) but the incident has spurred me to think again about why lost objects stay lost. Surely someone must have seen a library book somewhere in that office and they had a choice: they could take it for themselves or they could turn it in to the employees. Since I have been back to that office (twice!) and the employees report that they haven't seen any library books, I must conclude the former choice was taken.

In the grand scheme of things a lost library book is not a debilitating blow but it does make me think about luck and karma. For example, last year when Mad Professah was visiting the other half for a few days in New York City in early December we bought tickets to see the Tony Award-winning musical Avenue Q and ate at the best burger place in the city before the show (it's called "The Burger Joint" and its hidden inside the Le Parker Meridien Hotel down the street from Carnegie Hall on 57th street). Anyway, somehow on the walk down from 57th street to 43rd street & Broadway our ticketshad disappeared! They were for 5th row center seats we had paid for wth cash at half-price from the TKTS booth in the Wall Street area (always less crowded then the Times Square booth!) Crestfallen and half a block away from the theater we didn't know what to do but we decided to go to the ticket booth of the theater and say what we could do. It turned out someone had found the tickets and returned them to the theater (and somehow beaten us to there even though Mad Professah is a notoriously fast walker). The tcket booth guy said he was just going to see if anyone walked in sheepishly asking if someone had found some tickets. We fit the bill. This was a Miracle on 43rd Street! Rejoicing we walked in to the theater and enjoyed the show immensely.

It just goes to show you, lost objects do not always stay lost. Who knows, maybe someone decided to return my lost library book themselves. Stay tuned (but don't hold your breath!)