I PICKED UP HUNDREDS OF BUTTONS TODAY!

 

Today was about as good as it gets.  I was out picking up trash for six hours, and I picked up 5,558 pieces.  My knee was pretty good until the last hour, but what a great day!

I picked up hundreds of buttons.  If I wanted a button collection, I would have had one, but I couldn't think of any reason I needed a button collection, so I threw them away.  (They were kind of fun to pick up!)

I saw so many friends, including the pretty little girl from Monday's blog post, and today I met her mother.  Her mother is just as pretty as she is!  And just as nice.

Little kids came out of nowhere to help me pick up trash. Many little ones that I haven't seen in a year still remember me.  I loved that.

I found a bag of beer bottles on the football field.  They were all nice and neatly stuffed in a bag.  

Don't you think if the person who drank all that beer had the time to put them neatly in a bag, that he could have put them neatly in a trash can?  

I hate these beer bottles.  All the caps are tightly screwed back on, and I have to remove them to squish the can.  It takes so much time.  

--Pick up the bottle.  

--Unscew the cap.  

--Throw it on the ground.  

--Squish it with my foot.  

--Pick it back up and put it in my recycle bin.

One thing that was pretty cool though, I filled up my recycle bin with cans today.  That hardly ever happens.

Everywhere I went today, it looked like this.  I get that nobody wants to read political advertisements, but please, find a trash can!

My favorite story today is about the saddest little boy I ever met.  He was about 8 years old, I'd guess.  I saw him trying to pull a garbage bag that must have had bricks in it, to the dumpster.  I hurried up and told him I would help.  It was all I could do to carry it and heave it into the dumpster. I have no idea how his mother thought he could handle that.

A minute later, I saw him with a pizza box and a small bag of trash. I didn't offer to help him this time.  He walked all the way to the dumpster and threw it inside, still looking like the saddest little guy I ever saw.

A minute after that, here he came with more trash.  I told him he could put it in my trash bag, and he did, and I got a tiny smile.

Right after that, I found a bright yellow super ball that looked like an eyeball.  I bounced it once to make sure it was truly a super ball, and it was.  The little boy was not in his house yet, and I said, "Hey, I got something for you!"  He came back to the sidewalk.  I bounced the little ball to him, and he missed it.  So together, we searched and searched in the grass and leaves.  We couldn't find it and finally gave up.  He headed back home.

I didn't give up.  I kept raking through the grass until I found it.  I yelled over to him, "Found it!!!"  And I got a big smile that time.  He came all the way over to me, and I put it in his hand this time.  No bounce.

Sometimes a simple act of kindness means more than we will ever know. Maybe he was sad because he had to help with chores, but maybe it was something more.