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As readers of my articles are aware, I really don’t understand people sometimes. This time, it’s because of littering. It’s like people don’t even care if their stuff ends up in the garbage. They just aim it in the general direction of the can, and their part is done. It’s like if they were in a restaurant, and the waiter, instead of bringing the food to their table, just threw it in their general direction.
A fish fell out of the sky and smashed a woman’s windshield.
“No, it’s close enough; you could reach it. Just scrape it off your friend’s shirt.”
It’s not like I never litter. I do try to be careful, though. For instance, I keep a garbage bag in my car. Nothing ever actually makes it into the bag, but at least if I’m aiming for it, I’m not throwing things out the window. My garbage is my own problem. And the problem of anyone who wants a ride in my car. (“No, it’s fine. Just sit on it.”) But every once in a while, I do generate some litter. For example, every Tuesday night, I put an overflowing box of papers at the curb for the garbage men to take Wednesday morning, and unfortunately they will not take our paper at all if there is anything in the bin that isn’t paper, such as a paperweight. So every Wednesday morning, I have to get out of bed and chase my papers around the neighborhood.
So I guess I should take this opportunity to educate people about the facts of littering, using recent stories from the news, so that I can finally get rid of all these newspapers floating around on my desk. Because, like it or not, littering is a serious issue. Just ask the man in Ohio who couldn’t get his son to clean his room, so he did what any good father would do: He called the police.
Okay, I’m sure he didn’t do this right away. He probably counted to three first.
“If you don’t clean your room when I count to three, I’m going to call the police. One… Two… Two-and-a-half… Two-and-three-quarters… I’m dialing…”
“911, what seems to be the problem?”
“Yes, officer, my son won’t clean his room.”
“Did you count to three, sir?”
“Yeah! I don’t know what else to do!”
“So what do you want from us?”
“I’m not sure. Can you arrest him? He’s twenty-eight.”
So the dispatcher sent a car over, and the son ended up promising to clean his room. Afterward, the father said that he was sorry he called the police, and that he didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize his son’s political career.
Yes, his son is in politics. Are you surprised?
FACT #1: LITTERING IS DANGEROUS.
Consider the woman in Ohio (yes, Ohio,) who was driving along the highway, when all of a sudden a fish fell out of the sky and smashed her windshield. I guess in general, a fish is probably the last thing you expect to land on your windshield, right after inexperienced parachutists and Polish people wearing knapsacks.
Actually, the fish, an 8-pound sheepshead, was dropped by an eagle, and thankfully, everyone was okay, or as okay as you would be if a fish landed on your car.
(I would like to take a moment here to address the question that is no doubt at the forefront of your mind: “There’s a fish called a ‘sheepshead’?” Yes, there is; and it would be extremely appropriate for Rosh Hashana. (“See? It’s a sheepshead’s head!” “It looks like a fish.” “You like it? I hit it with my car.”) In fact, according to the encyclopedia, Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn is named after this very fish. Probably because of the smell.)
FACT #2: THROWING STUFF OUT OF YOUR CAR IS NOT OKAY EITHER.
Take the man in California who is facing charges of littering for throwing golf balls out of his car into a national park. And no, this wasn’t a one-time incident. According to park rangers, he’d been coming to the park every few days, and, in the course of a year, had tossed out around 3,000 golf balls. Understandably the rangers were concerned, because who throws out 3,000 golf balls? If you don’t like golf balls, stop buying them!
But eventually they caught the man, who said that he’d been throwing balls into the park to honor deceased golfers. Which brings us to:
FACT #3: NO MATTER HOW WELL YOU THINK YOU EXPLAINED IT, NO ONE WILL EVER REALLY UNDERSTAND WHY YOU’RE LITTERING.
Even if you’re a scientist. Last year, scientists in Greenland decided they wanted to study the movement of a specific glacier, because there’s not much else to do, up in Greenland. But they didn’t have much of a budget for high-tech tracking devices, so they went out and bought 90 rubber duckies, wrote their contact information on them, and inserted the duckies into little holes in the glacier. Their plan is that when the ice melts, the duckies will float wherever the water does, and someone will find one and call them, and they’ll know basically where the water is going to flow whenever it is that the ice caps melt.
But even though scientists are trained to ask the hard questions, here are some hard questions I don’t think they asked:
1. Does it really matter where the water goes if the entire sea level is rising anyway?
2. If the sea level is rising, wouldn’t it be better for all of us if we were standing on top of a massive pile of garbage?
3. If you were walking along the shore and a rubber duckie washed up, would you pick it up? Or would you say, “Don’t touch that! You don’t know where it’s been!”
4. Would you imagine that this is where it’s been?
So basically, scientists found a way to play with rubber duckies in a giant bathtub, which is what science really is all about, and
FACT #4: IT’S NOT LITTERING IF YOUR CONTACT INFO IS ON IT
which means that I can stop chasing my recyclables around the neighborhood. If the cops call me, I can just say that I was testing the wind direction, and that apparently the wind is blowing toward them, and that if they smell anything, they shouldn’t be alarmed; it’s just my kids refusing to clean their room. Most likely, we’re going to read in the paper one day that a yellow rubber ducky with a phone number on it landed on someone’s windshield.
_(english).jpg "Oil Prices So Low, Arab Nations Consider Educating Youth")
