I find one every time. If I’m close to home and haven’t, I keep on going until I do.
On most days, my average is three. But if I’m more focused on the gutter, I’ll find more. One day, I found 28 and came home with the pocket of my running pants bulging.
Why do I pick up nails and screws when I run? Because I was raised Catholic and once a Catholic … You sin, you do penance. Because I want to leave the world in a better place than I’ve found it. If I’ve done nothing else with my time here, I’ve removed rusty nails and screws from the sidewalks and roadways of San Francisco. No one knows I’ve done it until now, and the good I’ve done is creating the absence of the bad thing. No one will know how I saved them from a punctured car tire or a wounded foot or hand and a tetanus shot.
Stopping once, five times, even on a rare day, 10 times, slows me down. I’m not running for speed. I’m running because I need to run. I’m picking up screws and nails because I need to say, “I’m sorry.”
LeslieCrawfordWriter 