Clothes on the ground

Some people rescue animals.  Some people rescue caved-in miners, or shipwrecked sailors, or wayward souls.  Some people rescue food that's about to go bad.

Apparently, I rescue clothes from the ground.  

Is this a thing other people do?  I keep finding abandoned clothes -- mostly jackets, but sometimes skirts, sometimes mittens or gloves, occasionally t-shirts.  Once I found a blanket.  I find them in the nearby park, along the street where I bike, on sidewalks as I run by.  And since I hate to see something perfectly good go to waste, I bring it home.  (And launder it first thing, but of course).

I try to only take clothes that have been left in the same place for a while, or clothes that otherwise look like they're abandoned.  That means, often, the clothes I rescue look superficially icky:  stuff trampled into the ground, rained on, run over by cars. But if I'm already sweaty from running, carrying something wet for a ways isn't all that much more disgusting than just being me.  And almost always, this stuff cleans up perfectly well.

Because I happen to have what I call a yard-sale body, it turns out that a bunch of these clothes fit me.  Some of them I keep: my very very very favorite t-shirt in the world -- the one I wore during the running segment of my IronMan -- was one I found wadded up along a sidewalk on our weekly running route.  My dog has since loved the shirt (chewing holes in it, alas), so I am keeping my eyes out along the sidewalks in hopes that I can strike pay-shirt pay-dirt again. 

But usually, I figure I've already got enough clothes, and so after laundering the whatever-it-is, I put it in our donation box to take to a local thrift shop.

Here's my latest rescue, the one that prompted this post.

This black jacket had been left by a tree in our local park, and it had gotten rained on and a bit caked with dirt.  I could totally understand why people would leave it there, all wet and muddy.  But those people aren't me.  

The jacket is really unusual in that it has no visible logos (I avoid wearing logos if I can).  It's incredibly cute and well made.  And it fits really well.  Even though I'm not a wears-black kind of person, and even though I already have a bunch of zip-up jackets (almost all street rescues), I'm kinda thinking of keeping this one.  

The price is right, I suppose.