You see some strange things in parking lots. I'm not just talking about strange vehicles, which are, after all, the natural habitat of the parking lot. Although it's certainly true that a powder blue pickup truck with velour loading deck, purple undercarriage lighting and a bumper sticker that says "I'm the proud parent of a lesbian" does certainly come under the hading of strange. No, I'm talking about discarded floss.
Not just any old discarded floss mind you. My friends, such as they are, could probably produce sufficient witnesses to meet the preponderance of evidence test that I am weird. Weird or not I don't actually get down on my hands and knees each time I dismount from a car and pick thorough the roadside detritus in an attempt to determine if random pieces of string are floss or, well, just random pieces of string. This was one of those plastic things that's more plastic than floss and is intended to, well I'm not sure what it's intended to do, certainly flossing must be a part of it's intended use.
What are those plastic things about anyway? What is it about using a piece of flavored, or unflavored, string to saw un-masticated pieces of food from between your teeth that required a tool be built for the purpose. Why do you need a holder? More to the point, why do you need a holder that seems to contain a number of additional tools that, with the application of the appropriate anesthetic, would allow you to do minor root canal surgery on any passer by. Why would you need to be able to floss one-handed? Ah but of course, we're in a parking lot. Why you would need to floss while driving down the road is, I admit, beyond me. However it seems we need to be able to do most things while in the car so at some point we reach the logical extension that flossing in motion is an integral part of the automobile culture.
So our unidentified driver has the social graces to detect the need to floss before their next great adventure in life, picking up a quart of milk and a packet of frozen peas at the grocery store. You find other things in parking lots, discarded beer cans for example, left there by people who had either just picked up a six pack and finished the first one on the way out to car or had just finished a six pack as they pulled into the lot to go inside and pick up another six pack. These people probably don't spend a lot of time at the tennis club and their education may never have covered when it's appropriate to litter, and when not. So you kind of expect beer cans. Sometimes you find half eaten fast food, which also has the potential to set the mind wandering. At what kind of pace are these people living life that they can't even finish fast food before they need to race on to another event in a long sequence of back to back events that is their life? A discarded soufflé, well of course, have you ever waited to one of those things to rise, people have better things to do, but half eaten fast food?
The person we're considering had the upbringing, the family support and an inbred thoughtfulness that led them to floss, yet somehow they managed to override all that and as they exited the vehicle casually drop the implement to the ground, strip of floss intact. No mean feat mind you, I've used those things, you can't get more than a couple of good pulls before there's the sharp release of tension that implies you'll floss no more!
Ah but perhaps this is the clue that leads us to consider some other possibilities. It seems unlikely that somebody with the delicacy to floss would litter so perhaps there is a message there. Perhaps the person was being kidnapped and, reaching into their pocket the only clue they could leave was a floss tool. A cry for help. A message to a busy world that all is not right, that investigation needs to be done, people need to be interrogated and questions need to be found for the answers laid out before us.
This could all be true, but I need to get to the store to buy some more denture cleanre and I've got to find somewhere to discard this half eaten taco. I've got things to do, places to be, these people with clean teeth will just have to look after themselves.