I lost the period on this title for a second and chuckled. Lost punctuation in this case was at first unintentional and then it became the point. No pun intended.
"It's lost change" sounds dismissive like "It's spilled milk" with the expectation that we should move on without much concern. Alternatively, "It's lost. Change." sounds like an exasperated and painfully truncated directive to move on from a hopeless situation. It's what we try to tell ourselves when we leave something sentimental behind, like a slightly damaged Ukulele in the back of a taxi in Puerto Rico.
Have you ever left something like that behind? Taxis and airports are a good place to do this. Taxis in the NYC have many kind stories about objects being reunited with their owners, but in an airport in a city far from home? It's gone. Maybe it was a favorite belt at security, or a jacket, or a sketchbook, or your phone charging three seats down, but now it's just 'gone'. Life changed in an instant even if in a tiny way. We also know that there's a lost and found somewhere, but we never seem to get back to that same airport in time. A TSA statement online suggests that they make every effort to reunite us with lost objects but then after 30 days they're gone
An NBC news article written a few years ago noted that one airport alone logged 16,000 misplaced objects. That's a lot of loss but also a lot of opportunity for someone else to enjoy your lost object. A TSA statement online suggests that they make every effort to reunite us with lost objects and after 30 days they sell, donate or destroy it. To you it becomes that thing you left behind, and to the next person--even if only in our imagination--it becomes the thing they found, bought or were given. In both cases lives changed slightly.
For the loser it's managing the change of living without something. For the finder it's the joy of discovery. So long slightly-cracked Ukulele, I hope that you find love in your new Puerto Rican home. Maybe the cab driver will leave it there in the back seat for his passengers to play . . .