LANCASTER, Pa. - Welcome to the land of the school lost and found.

Here, you'll discover the typical: mountains of jackets in every color imaginable.

And the not so typical.

There is a pair of size 6 Hanes Her Way underwear at Fritz Elementary in Conestoga Valley.

Staff found a dental retainer once at Hans Herr Primary School in Lampeter-Strasburg.

And Hempfield's Mountville Elementary School keeps finding lunch boxes bearing names that don't match any student or staff.

"There was a tent in there one year," Tony Aldinger, principal of Manheim Township's Schaeffer Elementary, said.

Now that summer is here, schools are

clearing out their lost-and-found bins and boxes.

Schools are displaying the items on tables by the front door and at school events, so parents can see them.

Hans Herr just cleared out half of its lost and found at an open house.

Educators get a kick out of what kids lose.

"Its not a nightmare to us," Hans Herr principal Kathy Focht said, chuckling. "To me, its unbelievable that children lose that many items."

Most of the lost items are winter clothing. Piles of coats and jackets, smelling of recess on a hot day and a boys' locker room, spill from the lost-and-found trunk at Schaeffer.

Ah, but there are jewels in the trunk, too.

There are troves of good coats that, if not claimed by the last day of school, will go to organizations that clothe the needy.

Other things left behind there this year: a stuffed white kitty, a Pokémon book, jump ropes, and the grand prize of them all, a Razor scooter. The foot-propelled scooters were all the rage a few years ago and cost about $50.

Manheim Townships Bucher Elementary has a Razor scooter in its lost and found, too.

Every student has felt the pain of losing something.

Fourth-grader Alyaha Johnson has never recovered many things she's lost at Schaeffer. Things like hair ties and gloves.

"I lose something, then I notice it's gone the next day," Johnson said.

Pity that forgetfulness doesn't evaporate as children grow older.

Teens are just as absentminded, but tend to lose more expensive things, educators say.

Like name-brand sneakers. There's a pair of white K-Swiss tennis shoes, size 10, in the lost and found at Garden Spot High in the Eastern Lancaster County School District.

At Elizabethtown Area High School, Sandy Swift, a math aide, has seen it all.

When the school year ends, she helps hunt for lost library books by searching empty lockers.

"It is amazing the things that are left in those lockers," Swift said.

But what the staff finds is not always pretty, Swift said.

Usually one empty locker becomes the communal dumping spot, where teens ditch anything and everything.

"It gets filled to the top with parts of lunches and clothes," she said.

School staff also find a bevy of gym clothes. Many athletes wear the same funky T-shirt all year, Swift said.

"There are things you wouldn't even touch," Swift said. "You open the locker, and they smell so bad."

It's the job of the custodial staff to clean up the leftover messes.

Cathy Trupe, custodian at Garden Spot, laughs when asked about what students leave behind.

Once, the staff found a mysterious ticking contraption that was some sort of alarm-clock gizmo from a science project. They soon realized it was harmless.

Phew.

Staff find a lot of jewelry, too. Girls often take their rings off to wash their hands and leave them on the sinks.

In the Elizabethtown school's front office, there is a drawer full of keys, cell phones, eyeglasses, and beaded and silver jewelry waiting to go home.

"You'd think that these kids would have told somebody that these things were missing," Swift said.