The other day, I was cycling with my son on the way to school when something in the road caught my eye.

It was a small plastic baggie, with a small, thumb-sized portion of a leafy, green substance that looked, well, herbal.

Had it been the first time I’d encountered such a thing, I might have dismissed it, but it was the third time this school year — and I use that as a time frame because all three instances have come within spitting distance of one of the city’s fine public high schools. It was the second time on this road alone.
I don’t imagine bags of spices are just dropping from the sky, so my little pea brain turned over the possibilities.

I could only come up with two scenarios to explain why I’d stumbled upon three samples of seasonings in the middle of the street.

In the first, an upstanding youngster riding in a car on his way to school opens the lunch his mother packed for him, finds, say, a single serving of spaghetti and a ready-made packet of choice, Italian herbs. Exasperated youngster exclaims, to no one in particular, “Mom, you know I don’t like oregano!” and chucks the offending spice packet out the window.

In the other, a struggling home-ec student — is there even still such a course? — smuggles a premeasured bundle of, say, rosemary and thyme in his or her backpack, hoping to add a little zing to the next cooking assignment. But said seasonings aren’t home-ec approved, so student, with a pang of conscience, flings the thing overboard.

Regardless of how they’ve gotten there, the baggies — surely containing no more than a few cents of oregano; to coin a phrase, let’s call ’em nickel bags — put me in a bit of a quandary.

They’re litter, so I’m tempted to pick them up, but I’m afraid they might be found in my possession, and I could be accused of trying to rig a home-ec assignment.

Then again, I don’t want to leave them in the middle of the road, lest some sketchy seasoning hooligans think they can come into my ‘hood and score herbes de provence any time of the night or day.

I suppose I could scoop ’em up and take ’em home and use the contents for their intended purpose: baking, of course. Perhaps a batch of brownies.