For about a month now this piece of asshole flotsam has been welcoming visitors to my neighborhood.
We live in one of the newer subdivisions in our little town. The neighborhood is less than five years old. The house we live in is about about to celebrate its third birthday.
There, at the entrance to this little slice of suburban heaven, a smashed and broken beer bottle has been laying in the street. It’s been an entire frickin’ month.
We happen to live at the farthest possible corner away from the entrance. So, for a month now, I’ve been making a wide arc when I turn on my final leg for home.
“Surely,” I thought, “someone will finally step up to plate and pick that motherfucker up.”
I decided to watch and wait. A science experiment was born.
From time to time, we find garbage in the streets. Yes, right here in civilized modern America. A certain percentage of us have evolved no further than, “Me done with this. Me drop on ground.”
Cigarette butts, used Taco Bell memorabilia, soda cans and other assorted accoutrements of modern existence have been found at the foot of our drive. And, you’ll never guess what we do. Never.
We pick it up. Even though it wasn’t our garbage. We call this wholly unselfish act of citizenship “being a good neighbor.”
So we watched and waited. Would the people who live closest to the beer bottle step up to the plate? After waiting an entire month we were forced to admit, no, they won’t. Their stubbornness and assholiness apparently knows no bounds.
How about any of our other neighbors? There are about 50 houses here in the subs. Would any of them step up? How about the nice elderly lady who likes to chat when I walk to the store? How about the City fireman who lives on the corner? How about the state police trooper at the end of the cul-de-sac who parks his patrol car in his garage? How about the people who have garage sales every month? Or the nice couple that takes their dog out – in a baby stroller – every single night and walks right by that beer bottle?
Nope. None of them. Not a single soul ever stepped up. These are the people I live with. There are my neighbors.
Today the science experiment finally came to an end. My wife and I took unprecedented and extreme measures. Steps had to be taken.
We picked up that motherfucking hazardous garbage!
We did it. We! The socially and advanced elite. We like to refer to ourselves as people having brains.
My wife did put the kibosh on my original plan. You see, in my world, I would have relocated the trash to the end of the driveway of the house closest to the scene. It would have been a gentle reminder from the rest of the neighborhood. A little love tap to the tires that said, “Hey, asshole. You let the rest of us down.”
Alas, my wife wouldn’t let me send that message. Score another good dead for us in the meaningless Book of Karma.
Shouts from the Abyss 
Oh how this takes me back, to the “good old days” of my attempt at improving my inner-city community through the virtue of home ownership. Each morning, after dreaming of shooting down police helicopters (induced by having them intrude on my sleep every night), I had to do a sweep of the street near my driveway, before heading off to work, to make sure I wouldn’t back over any little “gifts” left by the drunk-driving, disrespectful, rap-thumping, teenaged thug wannabes that had also worked very hard to ruin my previous night’s sleep.
I loved the video. Here’s one that’s a little more reminiscent of my own “neighbors in the hood” memories:
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Well, geez. You make a wee little broken beer bottle sound so trivial. 🙂
In my neck of the woods the sight of a helicopter going over causes people to come out of their houses and look up at the sky. Usually it means there’s a fire somewhere close.
That video was funny! Thanks for the share!
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I’ve been depressed by the garbage that I find in the open space behind our neighborhood (where we take the dog for walks). Most of it seems like stupid teenager stuff — beer cans and fast food wrappers. But the stuff that gets me is the cigarette butts amidst chaparral that’s just ready to burn!
F#&$ers
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Some people just don’t care. I surmise that these folks are usually the “have nots.” The local furniture store did a major facelift on their property. Someone promptly took a sharp object and dragged it along their new building for a whole city block. Why? Because it was there. Just to be a dick.
We had a fire threaten four homes recently. It started at the back of a fast food restaurant parking lot, went up the hill on an empty lot, then burned down a bunch of trees. It was determined that it was started by a lit cigarette tossed from the fast food parking lot and will never be solved.
I frequently find butts way up our driveway and none of us smoke. It makes me wonder. What do they do? Stand up by my garage door when they smoke? Or, more likely, I think they make a game out of it. As they walk by they try to see how far up our driveway they can throw their disgusting garbage.
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Actually, I think these particular f$#&ers are the teenage loser dirtballs of people in our neighborhood, who just have nothing constructive to do and no respect for common property — or anyone else’s for that matter.
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See? People really are the centers of their own universe. Filled with crap and poop but it’s their own crap and poop and their own universe. You and the Mrs. are knee-deep and must hold strong. We out here in the blog-o-sphere look to you to set an example. An example totally ignored by your neighbors but you take what you can get. 🙂
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My ultimate dream is to be ignored.
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[…] these are my neighbors. These are the “We Don’t Pick Up Beer Bottles In The Street” kind of people. They may not care about my car’s tires, but at least I can count on […]
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