This morning as I walked the dog, I came across one of my neighbors, who's something of a wild card, emptying the garbage from her car right into the grassy parkway in front of her house. Her hotheaded son was yelling at her to stop, and she responded, "Why should I? Everybody else throws their trash in my yard."Ummm . . . never mind.
It's worth noting that John spent a couple of hours picking up litter from the block on Sunday. Two weeks before that, our 9- and 7-year-old neighbors Rose and Celia did the honors. And the next big wind is guaranteed to transfer that trash straight into someone else's yard.
But what did I do, after all my vainglorious rants over litter? Absolutely nothing. My fear of being a bad neighbor to one person (ok, she *is* sort of a scary person) made me a lousy neighbor to the rest of the block.
So I appeal to you. Help me be armed for next time (there will undoubtedly be a next time). What would you have done in my shoes? A heads-up penny and discarded Cheeto's bag for your thoughts.
(In the role of the woman's car litter, which I was too skittish to photograph, is an understudy pile of trash, conveniently spied in our front yard this morning).
4 comments:
Found an empty beer can in my mailbox the other day. I got mad and threw it into the middle of the street...then recycled it the next day. I'm no model citizen.
Au contraire, my recycling flower. Your conscience got the better of you in time.
I'd also like to commend your neighbor on at least finding a place out of sight for that beer can. (Everything's relative in this crazy world :-).
We need our crying Indian for the 21st Century.
Did you happen to have a plastic bag with you to pick up doggy droppings? One tactic might've been to say, "Hey, I just happen to have a spare trash bag on me--here ya go!"
(Provided, of course, the bag didn't already have a deposit form Inez in it.)
Don't you mean crying Native American? ;)
I talk about that commercial all the time and how it really impacted me. I think he guaranteed I'd never litter.
Speaking of which, the past couple days worth of howling winds have dumped a good Tony's bag worth of trash in my yard...along with a couple Tony's bags to put it in. Now that the sun has peeked out I need to go clear the trash out of the tulips.
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