Living so close to tailgate central, I'm used to the trash. After every game, I have to pick crap out of my yard that people are so careless as to drop. I don't mind bottles and cans, since there are people who come around to pick them up for the deposit. But the crap like paper plates, beer cases, cups...all that stuff I have to pick up after the game. Usually, I'm in the front yard and can yell at those people who think they're anonymous: "Do I look like your mother? Pick that shit up!"

It's the back yard that I worry about sometimes. I was in the kitchen last Saturday, putting on sunblock, when this guy walks into my backyard, looks around, and starts to drop trou. He musta completely zoned out on the window, because I was right there. I knocked on the window, gave him a 'what-the-hell-do-you-think-you're-doing-my-back-yard-is-not-a-public-toilet' gesture. He looked at me like I was the one who wasn't where I was supposed to be.

But I have to say the most interesting thing I've found so far, I found earlier this evening as I was mowing my lawn. As I was walking along, something shiny caught my eye: it was a pair of handcuffs. Saturday, right after a cop car with its sirens on (which I have never seen during a football game) tried to speed its way through drunk pedestrians, a bike cop raced from behind my house, assumedly because he had cut through the backyards. My guess is that he dropped them then.

Me, being the good samaritan that I am, dropped them off at the cop shop at the end of my street on my way to tae kwon do this evening. I was tempted to keep them, especially after the cop said that he hadn't heard of any reported missing, but then I thought, 'Where might these have been?' and the idea wasn't so appealing anymore.

Especially without keys.