Found

Found is a collection of discarded and misplaced notes, letters, and pictures, that someone came across along the sidewalk or crumpled up in the trash. The book is filled with strange, hilarious, and moving insights into people's lives. These are things people never intended anyone to see, which makes them all that much more interesting, getting to peek in on someone else's life.

That is after all what the whole social networking is built on. Now I've done or am still doing the Friendster/Myspace/Facebook/Twitter-thing and while the social networking sites are great for keeping current with far off friends, there comes a point where all I'm doing is just, for lack of a better term, spying on people while at the same time sort of boasting about everything I have going on. Social networking sites seem to feed two guilty pleasures at once, wanting to be nosey and wanting to be the center of attention. It could be called social eavesdropping or social grandstanding. And while I'm speaking only for myself, I'm sure most social networkers are guilty of either or both. Why else would anyone feel the need to share what they are eating for lunch in real-time?

Another draw back of social networking (assuming you find the previous point a drawback) is that these sites have all but strangled face to face conversations and replaced it with awkward small-talk. Think about it, we've seen each others' vacation pictures, know what movies each of us saw last weekend, and of course what we've had for lunch so what else is there possibly left to talk about when we finally meet up face to face. We can't talk about mutual friends because we've both seen the friends' pages and thus know everything about the friends already.

With all the said I probably won't be breaking the social networking habit anytime soon, but I have a huge amount of respect for anyone who has avoided them all together. The lack of desire to know what everyone is eating for lunch everyday is unimaginable.

If I can get back to Found, the book and its website have caused me to seek out my own found items by flipping through secondhand books and scanning the sidewalks . I haven't had much luck. My best finds probably occured during my classroom teaching days. High school students are gold mines when it comes to discarded notes, doodles, and writings. A teacher can create quite the collection over the years.

There is only one item that I've found and kept. It appears to be a skit done by three 10th graders I had in class. I found it on the floor at the end of the day and never bothered giving it back to the owners. The skit seems to be a commerical for pogs. I found this in 2002/2003 so the pog trend was long gone which I guess was intended to be part of the humor. Warning, it's funny but only in the immature, adolescent way. I'll transcribe since it's hard to read but I'll leave the spelling mistakes to add to it's charm:

Pogs

J - Hey I'm Master McPogsalot, I'm here to tell you about Pogs.

M - And I'm his superhero sidekick Poggy Pogenstrom.

L- These videogames are boring, I need something to do with. Someone help me!!

J&M - Hey Timmy, Pog superheros here.

J - We are here to tell you about mankinds greatest creation....ever...POG'S!!

M - Yeah remember when your parent's got a divorced because of you? Well pogs will bring them back together, so buy pogs.

J - Also try and collect all 50 million pogs on sale. And if your friend has some pogs you want, kill him and steal his pogs, I swear it would be worth it.

L - But wait didn't pogs only used to be cool?

M- Thats just filthy anti-pog propaganda the government is saying to control your soul. Pogs protect your soul Jimmy.

L - It's Timmy.

J - Whatever, Let's get back to the real point here...Pogs.

M - Yes and that is to worship pogs and slammers daily. And convert to P.O.G.

J - Pogs over goverment.

L - I see. Isn't that blasphemaus.

M - No! Pog was Washington's middle nane.

L - Wow, pogs are cool!

J - Damn straight, Timmy.