This was in my hometown, Tallahassee FL, paper this morning. It's a frightening thought that we may be one of these absentminded people. Posted on Tue, Jun. 03, 2003 Pile of junk or slice of life? Lost-and-found bins may hold little bit of both By Tony Bridges DEMOCRAT STAFF WRITER Want to really get to know a town? Check the lost and found at its copy shops. People forget everything imaginable there, from birth and death records to compromising photos and sometimes even their identities. The bits they leave behind on the photocopier glass offer little clues to their lives and the life of the city. "You find a lot of interesting things," said Terry Crews, who works at Kinko's on West Tennessee Street. "You learn about different people - we're all different, and we're all the same." At Kinko's, the forgotten items get dumped into a scuffed plastic bin. The store usually keeps lost property for a few months and then tosses it out, unless employees can track down the owner. Most of the time, people just never come back. Stuff piles up fast. Last week, clerk Bryan Moye grabbed the tub and carried it to the store's front counter. The bin must weigh nearly 30 pounds, stuffed to the top of its 18-inch sides and packed so tight not much else can fit. "That's just over the last two months," he said. The books take up the most space. There's a text on computer surveillance and another on comparative religions. There's a Florida travel book, a Boy Scout Handbook and a copy of the city of Quincy's Comprehensive Plan. There's a Florida atlas with a sticker from Havana Elementary School. A student making copies for a school project, maybe? Across the street at Target Copy, books are high on the list of most-forgotten items. Employees routinely run stacks back to Florida State University or a few blocks away to the county library, said manager Kevin Wable. Some of what gets left is the routine flotsam of life. In the bin at Kinko's, there are legal letters, time sheets, doctors' notes and resumes - looks as though someone wants a job at Paramount Studios. Dig a little farther down and there's a lease for business equipment, a driver's license and one of those annoying chain e-mails. Other bits are more intriguing, such as a list of caves in the lowlands of Belize. Kinko's sits near the Florida State and Florida A&M campuses, and it's easy to tell that students come in. The bin is packed with fliers for fraternity parties, ladies' night drink specials and menus for student hangouts. There's a short story from a creative writing class, notes from a physics lesson and what looks like an advance copy of a math test. There's even a mock-up of a magazine cover for something called "The Tomahawk Chop." Sample headline: "Fashion 101 - Do's and Don'ts." And, of course, there are the photos. Some are just typical family snapshots, those endless close-ups of toothless babies. Others are the kind students don't want their parents to see - like the young woman drinking alcohol off a man's stomach. A few are just funny, such as the snapshot of Spider-Man playing the drums, or the man posing with a Hooter's waitress, wearing a big grin. Sometimes people leave nudie photos, too. "They say, 'I'm doing this for my boyfriend, and I don't want anybody to see,'" Moye said. "Then they make copies and walk out and leave them on the glass." There aren't any in the bin. What happens to them? "They get shredded," Moye said, straight-faced. But not everything that gets forgotten is worth a chuckle. Sometimes people leave the serious things they need to live. Kinko's has a bundle of passports and driver's licenses and even a few death certificates. At Target, they've found results of HIV tests, immigration paperwork and tax returns. One time, a man left every piece of his identification. Another time, someone left a $25,000 tax-refund check. "It just blows me away how people can be so careless with such important documents," Wable said. "We all get in a hurry, but how can you leave your whole life behind?" So, what have you forgotten lately?