Every year for the last 4 or 5 years, we acquire an extra beach ball or one of those super sized play balls they sell in the giant cages at the grocery store. They just show up on our lawn. One day, they are just there. We take a garbage can lid, turn it upside down, put the ball in it so it won't roll, and leave it on the front lawn so the owner can claim it. They never do.
I have always wondered where they come from - how far can a ball travel that its owner doesn't drive by and get it? And it happens every year, usually in late spring - early pool season. One year the ball was blue, once pink, once even multi-colored.
Yesterday I was on my way home from picking up Eldest Child from preschool when I saw it in the distance. Something weird looking, just bopping down the road in the distance. (about 8 blocks from our house) At first I thought it was an animal - all I could see was the motion. As we approached it, it looked like an empty grocery bag blowing in the wind. But when we were only a few houses away, I recognized it for what it was - a multi-colored beach ball rolling down the street, along the curb. We passed it and I watched it head straight for the major cross road, it seemed bent for destruction - like a toddler headed right out into the road. Finally I lost sight of it in the mirror and went home, still wondering where it was going.
Today, on the way to preschool, I saw it again, brightly colored, wedged between a car tire and the curb, stuck. Either the someone would spot it and take it, like we do, or the driver would move the car without seeing it and the ball would continue on its journey to who knows where. I know that the birds journey north and south, the butterflies venture back and forth, the lady bugs travel high and low, and now another rite of spring has arrived - the beach balls are migrating.
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