(This place is) FINE FOR LITTER

I don’t understand the mindset that allows you to throw stuff out of your car. Or maybe I do. Maybe it’s that Freud thing. You know, the anal expulsive character. Where it’s ok to poo all over the world. It’s either that or people are just plain creeps. Choose one. Or both. The other day while waiting for the long suffering wife to run wild crazy and free from her workplace so I could take her home I engaged in my usual time killing exercise. Across from her workplace there is an intersection with stop signs. Both directions and both almost universally ignored. So I count the scofflaws. One day in a ten minute period I counted thirty five cars that either just slowed a little or outright blew past the signs. One was a police car! On this day a young man rolled to what I have heard called a “California stop”, lowered his window and ejected a large red plastic cup. The kind you serve beer in at keg parties. I was appalled. But it’s not the strangest thing I have seen thrown out of car windows. Of course it’s normal to see cigarettes butts come flying out but a tampon cylinder? Makes you go hmmmm. A walk along any roadside here in NEPA will show you that the world is some folk’s garbage dump. Fast food bags, half eaten food, used condoms (ugh) and empty soda and beer cans of every brand known to man. I guess it’s tough to enforce but the law is clear. PA Vehicle Code, Title 75, Chapter 37 - litter and waste dropped, thrown or deposited from a vehicle onto a road right-of-way. Penalties: considered a summary offense, imposes a fine of not more than $900, depending on where the dumping occurs, and/or picking up and removing litter from public or private property. I like the sound of that picking up and removing litter from public or private property idea. Seems like a good old “eye for an eye” punishment. Strangest thing I have found? By my mailbox. On my country road. Two hypodermic needles. Right next to them a bag from a fast food joint. My immediate thought was a diabetic. Over dosed on junk food they had to shoot up with insulin. The long suffering wife said junkies. She was probably right. In hospitals and doctors’ offices they have special containers for “Sharps.” I wore gloves and wrapped them in the fast food bags. Dropped them in what the fast food junkies have evidently never seen. My garbage can. So I cleaned up after you. Would you do the same for me? Somehow I doubt it. I could be wrong.