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I take the train into the city on a daily basis. Sometimes they are full of people, and there are barely any seats available. Other times, there are a handful of available seats.

For many reasons I will get into, these seats are somehow occupied. Not by people, but my newspapers.

You see, Boston has a free newspaper called the Metro and you will always see people leaving their newspapers behind on the trains. The more polite people actually leave them nicely folded on their seats while others just throw them on the floor where they get ripped apart by people's footsteps. I've also seen them being used to cover wet areas on seats on rainy days. This just creates a mess.

The ones that are in good condition were probably left behind because whoever picked up a newspaper on their way to work finished reading it and didn't want to take it with him. The train does make announcements to passengers to not leave their belongings behind for safety reasons, but it seems that people don't consider newspapers to be dangerous carry-ons.

For someone like me who sometimes doesn't go out of his way to pick up a newspaper even if it's free, I like finding these abandoned newspapers on the train. I pick them up, I read them, and when I am done with them, I leave them for someone else to read.

Why not just pick up and read me?