Lonely shoe

On two different occasions yesterday, I saw a stranded, lonely shoe left by the side of the road. Then I thought about the many times in the past where I've seen stranded shoes forlornly discarded at the side of the road.

Which got me wondering - how does one go about losing just one shoe? Granted, half of the shoes you see on the road can be accounted for: somebody throws them away because they already lost the first one.

But how does one go about losing just one shoe? Are you in such a hurry that as your walking and your shoe falls off, that you just don't have the time to go back and get it and put it on again? Did it fall out of your gym bag? If so, how do you not notice the weight difference? (p.s., you don't often see light-weight expensive sneakers lying around).

Did the mother shoe have too many shoe puppies and you had to toss one away, tied in a bag and thrown into the river. (author's note: I have never gotten rid of excess puppies this way).

Did you fall asleep while riding shotgun, with your foot out the window, and the driver of the car played a funny trick on you?

Really, I have no explanations.

Autobody shop

File this under strange observations:

I drove past an independent repair shop the other day and noticed that the parking lot was full of snow covered cars. This got me thinking that at every repair shop I've ever been to, or driven past, there are always the requisite broken, snow-covered cars in the lot.

Which makes me wonder:

1) Do autobody shops have a distributer, similar to restaurants, that supplies them with broken cars so that it looks like they have lots of work?
2) Who are the people who take their cars to the shop, but don't actually get them worked on for months? Did they max out the credit card on the towing charges?
3) Maybe it's the shop owner who buys smashed cars in hopes of restoring them when he has free time