Game over

Recycling, gamer style
London, ON
November 2018
This photo originally shared on Instagram

It's 5:55 on a cold, quiet King Street in downtown London. I'm walking to the Via train station on my way to Toronto for the day for work. It isn't a rough area, but it isn't a part of town where - or a time of say when - you'd otherwise let your guard down. I've had enough near-misses in this 'hood to be justifiably paranoid. So I'm absorbing every detail around me, including the boxes strewn haphazardly across the sidewalk up ahead.

As I get closer, I realize it's the packaging from a Nintendo Wii video game console. For context, this thing was introduced in 2006, and our now-young-adult kids long ago outgrew it. Why it's here is a complete mystery.

So I stop and stare because a) I've got a bit of extra time in the schedule and b) stopping and staring is just what I do. Another weird quirk of mine.

Soon enough, I decide it's photo-worthy. Not because it's an especially aesthetically pleasing scene. Just look at it: Ew. But because I needed a placeholder for the questions that were racing through my head: Who left this here? Why? What's the backstory? Is it a happy or a sad story? Or something in between?

I don't know why trivialities like this stop me dead in my tracks, but I'm glad they do. Adult life is usually so filled with seriousness that an occasional step off the merry-go-round is probably a good boost for the soul.

But it doesn't happen on its own, and as I stood there on the sidewalk shivering in the damp, pre-dawn cold and tucked my smartphone back into my pocket, I made a mental note to look for more of these moments on my next walk. And the next.

Because what is life but a chaotic collection of tiny moments and mysteries, all begging us for a bit of conscious thought before we charge off to our Next Big Thing and forget that they ever mattered in the first place?

The thing is, they very much do.

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