{"id":6690,"date":"2025-10-25T09:56:46","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T15:56:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/?p=6690"},"modified":"2025-10-25T10:02:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T16:02:58","slug":"lost-gum","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/2025\/10\/25\/lost-gum\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost Gum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Someone left behind a package of minty gum. It was sitting on a desk after all the kids had gone. The box was full and wanted chewing. I figured someone might claim it if I put it on my desk in plain sight &#8212; next to the left-behind water bottles, headphones, and hoodie.<\/p>\n<p>The next day, after we were finished talking about factoring quadratic expressions, Martin asked me a question.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Mr. Hasan, did you find a package of gum after class the other day?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I did,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;Is this yours?&rdquo; I held up the abandoned minty gum package.<\/p>\n<p>He nodded.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Is it really yours?&rdquo; I asked. (I&rsquo;d ask the same for someone claiming the headphones, so why not for gum?)<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said.<\/p>\n<p>I handed it to him. He took out a couple sticks of gum and passed them out to the other students sitting at his pod.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>After class, I noticed the package of minty gum was on the desk. He had left it behind, again.<\/p>\n<p>I walked over and picked it up. A scrap of paper fell from beneath it.<\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"https:\/\/jumpingfish.smugmug.com\/Blogpix\/2025\/10\/i-tKb7T5q\/A\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"confession\" src=\"https:\/\/photos.smugmug.com\/Blogpix\/2025\/10\/i-tKb7T5q\/0\/NDrxqctwdx8GsJz3ngQ9DBXtX5B9RQKD9PhNbzW4k\/S\/confession-S.jpg\" alt=\"a note in which he confesses it wasn't his and he apologises\" width=\"275\"><\/a><\/center><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Someone left behind a package of minty gum. It was sitting on a desk after all the kids had gone. The box was full and wanted chewing. I figured someone might claim it if I put it on my desk in plain sight &#8212; next to the left-behind water bottles, headphones, and hoodie. The next [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6690"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6692,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6690\/revisions\/6692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/augerhandle.net\/blogs\/jumpingfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}