Let’s stomp out litter

So I’m walking up Sixth Avenue on a breezy day, when out of nowhere, a whirling piece of cellophane hits me smack in the chest. Seconds later, I’m dodging a flying tinfoil projectile.

Then I take note of the two middle-aged, office-working men in front of me—one is drawing a smoke from a newly-opened pack of cigarettes.

Now, I’m not the greenest guy in the bunch, but in this day and age, who still litters? And why should they not be summarily thrown in jail for something so thoughtless, stupid, destructive and easily avoidable?

Does it really take that much effort to walk two or three steps out of your way to avoid polluting?

It’s disconcerting when I see children who haven’t been taught the importance of keeping our neighborhoods clean dropping a candy wrapper, and mildy enraging when the perpetrators are unruly adolescents so badly raised by their parents they think desecration is cool. But to see it perpetrated by a middle-class, middle-aged guy in the middle of the street really got my goat.

There are garbage cans on almost every corner of every street in every major city. The garbage cans are there for a reason. Does it really take that much effort to walk two or three steps out of your way to avoid polluting? If you’re really that lazy, perhaps you are also too lazy to breathe.

Or what about simply pocketing the refuse? That’s what my mom taught me to do when I was, oh, about 4 years old. I was somehow able to master the feat then (she was sooo proud), thus I must believe any 50-year-old with hands and a brain the size of a pea can master it.

Step 1: Crumple garbage into a small ball.

Step 2: Put it in your pocket.

Step 2a: If you don’t have a pocket, no problem! Just hold it, dimwit.

Step 3: Throw away later.

See? Not that difficult.

Now, I began to wonder whether Littering Idiot on Sixth Avenue would have acted so callously in his own neighborhood. Nobody actually lives on Sixth Avenue so I was fairly confident this was not his neighborhood. And he was dressed in normal office-worker business-casual so I was fairly confident he was not armed.

When I confronted Littering Idiot and complained about his boorish behavior, he apologized, but in that completely patronizing way which means he really wasn’t sorry at all. I laughed at Littering Idiot—ha ha ha—and then berated him some more.

He took offense that I had called him out in front of his friend, but his friend should be just as ashamed for not saying something when the littering occurred. I told his friend this. He was not impressed with my opinion.

People who litter are telling the world—no, openly showing the world—they are inconsiderate slobs who have no regard for cleanliness or decency. Behind closed doors they live squalid lives full of squalor and sadness and self-loathing.

Give a hoot, don’t pollute. Idiot.