Try this for a 'pick-up' line: "Excuse me, you dropped this."
Litter says I could not care less about my fellow man or my
environment. Litter is as self-centered an act as there is.
It's selfish with a capital 'S'.
I was walking in my own neighborhood the other day, minding my own business, when a car slowly drove by. The driver, an attractive woman of a certain age, rolled down her window. I thought she was going to ask me for directions. Instead, she threw a Styrofoam coffee cup onto the street. She then drove on and parked a block away. I know this because I followed her with her coffee cup in hand. When she got out of her car, I greeted her. "Excuse me, I think this is yours," I said, handing her the cup. "You dropped it back there." She did not thank me for its return. Instead, she threw it on the front seat of her car, slammed the door and stormed away. She did not call me a jerk, but that was what she was thinking. Maybe worse.
Fine, I'm a jerk. Maybe worse. So be it.
When people talk about the end of civilization as we know it, they speak of everything from violence on the streets to moral decay in our bedrooms. They are wrong. The beginning of the end of civilization as we know it is litter. It's that simple.
Litter says "I do not care," and when millions of people say, "I do not care," we're in trouble.
Litter says I'll just throw anything I want on the street and someone else will take care of it.
Litter says I couldn't care less about my fellow man or my environment.
Litter is as self-centered an act as there is. It's selfish with a capital 'S'.
Am I lecturing here? Good.
I have no idea why I'm so bugged by litter. Maybe I didn't pick up my room enough as a kid and I'm making up for it now. To me, littering is right up there with being rude to waiters. Both are cardinal sins in my eyes. When I see it, I take note of the offender and plan never to see him again. Not that that woman of a certain age will be inviting me over to dinner any time soon.
Friends tolerate my litter obsession. They know when they're walking with me that I'll stop for a piece of paper or a bottle or a soda can and carry it to the next trash bin. They keep on walking. I play catch up.
Many times when I'm out walking the dog in the morning, I come home bearing an armload of trash. My mother says if I ever lose this job, I could hire myself out as a street sweeper. Sounds fine to me.
I am not telling you all this to win a good-citizen award. I am telling you this because perhaps you would like to join me. It's not hard. Just pick up the can, just snatch that newspaper flying in the wind, just plop whatever you find in your path into a trash can and move on.
I live on a little side street not far from a major thoroughfare lined with bars and restaurants. People cruise my street for parking places, especially on busy weekend nights. And those who aren't old enough to get into the bars improvise. They sit in their cars drinking beer, leaving the empty cans behind so the police won't find them on the floor of the car if they get picked up later.
For litterers, they're actually polite. Maybe they know about me, because they leave their empties neatly lined up in a row on the curb, so cleaning up after them on a Sunday morning is really quite easy. I feel like a bartender, except there's no tip, no football talk.
The most egregious littering offense, however, is when people park on my street and empty their vehicles of anything they may not want. They leave behind not just the contents of their ashtray, which is bad enough, but wrappers, tissues, empty soda cans, dirty diapers and old mail that's been floating around the car for the last year.
A man from Bethesda, Md. did that just the other day. How do I know? In the trash heap on the curb in front of my house were envelopes with his name and address on them. I have thought of returning everything to him in a big manila envelope, postage due.
I have thought of driving to his home and gently placing it all on his manicured suburban lawn.
I have thought of just calling him up and asking him when it would be convenient for him to swing by and pick up his belongings.
Am I being a jerk again?
Or Worse?
Perhaps.
Want to join me?