Making That Old Indian Cry
Posted by Hazel Stone | Filed under Ephemera
It apparently takes one week to recover from the amount of interstate traveling we did last week. We now return to your regularly scheduled snark.
Upon returning from ferrying the children to school this morning, I witnessed an (outwardly) well-to-do soccer mom chuck a chocolate milk bottle out the window of her mini-van. Now, I am certainly not a Mother-Gaia-love-the-world sort of person, but there are trash cans basically everywhere you look these days…so why would you throw your trash on the side of the road? Do you enjoy seeing trash on verges as you drive by? Or is it just one more thing you’re not noticing, along with your husband’s infidelity and your children’s delinquency.
Oops, I profiled a bit there, sorry.
So, do you, our readers, arbitrarily toss your trash about? Or do you wait to find an actual waste bin?
[poll=1]
Tags: use your head
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April 14th, 2008
You know who the worst offenders are?
Smokers.
While I think smoking is an idiotic habit (something that became obvious to me at age 13), and while I’m grateful for non-smoking flights, workplaces, and restaurants, I also think that the nanny-staters have gone way overboard in their efforts to ban smoking everywhere (bars, casinos, sidewalks, anywhere near buildings, your own yard). If you want to smoke, you should be free to where there is no significant chance of really bothering others.
I also think that smokers should be perfectly free to smoke while driving — but they are not perfectly free to throw their cigarette butt out the window. Yet I have seen this constantly for my entire adult life. I’ve also helped out on roadside litter cleanups — and there are always myriads of butts, far too many (and in too poor shape) to stop and pick each one up.
Back when I lived in Houston (1979-81), there was a columnist in the Houston Chronicle who used to regularly print the license number and car make/model of drivers whom he saw throwing cigarettes out their car windows while driving.
There’s no real excuse for littering; it’s just rude and lazy. I think that most of the people who litter would be appalled if their neighbors regularly threw trash into their yards, yet they think nothing of, in effect, doing the same thing themselves. ..bruce..
April 15th, 2008
For some reason – don’t ask me because I couldn’t tell you – I’ve never dropped litter. If I’ve ever produced any, I’ve carried it until I’ve found a bin to put it in (this has on occasion been an ordinary household bin, but nobody’s ever taken me to task for that). I’ve been like this since I was a kid … maybe I was told at school or something? I don’t know – I can’t remember ever being told.
I was born and raised a country boy; maybe that has something to do with it?
I used to have a car, but now I live in town I don’t have one because I don’t need one. I can walk or get a bus anywhere I want to go, and get a train for longer journeys. When I did have a car I always used the ashtray for cigarette butts, and any rubbish I just threw into the front passenger footwell. Basically, the inside of my car was a tip. A cop criticised me for that once, but when I asked him if he preferred I just chucked it out of the window, answer got I none.
The inside of my house is a tip too, but that’s a whole other story. At least I know where everything is
The one kind of litterer I really can’t stand is the arsehole who’s quite happy to carry a can or bottle of something to drink while it’s full and heavy, but as soon as it’s empty and not heavy any more he just chucks it away wherever he happens to be. This frequently happens with all those nature lovers who like to go for a hike in the country. Arseholes. When I was a kid – in the country – a bunch of us were playing rough and tumble in some long-ish grass and I nearly bled to death because some arsehole had thrown away an empty bottle; I didn’t see it in the grass, fell over, and slashed my wrist artery lengthwise (still have a beautiful scar). My friends got me home, and dad got me to a medic in good time, leaving a trail of blood all the way.
Littering is not a harmless habit.