Thursday, when I first saw these 12 pairs of shoes hanging from the power line at the park where my daughter and I went to feed the ducks and vermin, I thought "Idiots!"I thought that some parents were probably very unhappy, if they even knew that the shoes had been lost.
That made me think about how many parents "give" things to their kids, yet still feel a sense of ownership over things that are not their own. If the kids own the shoes, even if the parents gave the shoes to them, then the shoes are not the parents' property. Neither are the kids.
Then I wondered if the shoes' owners had tossed them up there, or whether people had done that to other people's shoes as a "joke" or just to be nasty. If you own something, it is yours to use or destroy. If someone "lost" the shoes for someone else, even as a "joke", that is theft and destruction of property.
Then I got to thinking a little more.
If the shoes were thrown there by their owners, then the only real issue is that the owner of the power line has been violated. People have made a mess on someone else's property that will have to be cleaned up. They are not taking responsibility for their actions.
My thoughts had gone full circle back to "Idiots!"
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