Good morning!

As I enjoy my first cup of coffee for the day, I’m going to add a little venting to that. One of the first things I saw this morning was a woman dropping off her child at my neighbor’s daycare across the street. I was sitting on my couch, front door open due to the gorgeous weather, and I heard the distinctive sound of a plastic bottle hitting the ground. And then the slamming of a car door. I got up and looked out my front door just in time to see the young mother pulling off. And there, on the ground under where her car had been parked, was the empty plastic bottle that she had nonchalantly thrown out of her car. There were a total of FIVE trash cans within walking distance of this woman – one of which she walked right past as she came down the steps after dropping off her kid. Unfortunately, I see this kind of thing on a daily basis. I love New Orleans, but it is the dirtiest city I have ever seen. And it’s because of people like this: lazy, selfish, pigs who obviously care nothing about the world around them, let alone other people. I have a very visceral reaction to witnessing someone throw their trash on the ground. What I would REALLY love to do is pick it up, run after their car, catch them at the red light, and fling their garbage back in the car right at their face. But, since that sort of thing is frowned upon, more often than not – on my street at least – I pick up somebody else’s garbage and throw it away. It’s been suggested to me that these kind of people “weren’t raised right – they weren’t taught.” Well, these are grown adults who SHOULD have common sense and decency – it’s not MY job to teach them, especially at this stage of their lives. But they DON’T have decency and they DON’T have common sense. They are basically just selfish, lazy, disgusting pigs who don’t give a crap about anybody but themselves and their own comfort and convenience. It is because of people like this that the city of New Orleans is as filthy as it is. I was born and raised in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the country – New York City – and that city of over 8 million people is CLEANER than a city of less than half a million. I’ve been known to walk with a crumpled up tissue or some other small piece of trash in my hand on the street until I see a garbage can. My parents raised me right. I would NEVER even THINK about throwing ANYTHING on the ground, let alone actually do it. You know what I do with the trash that’s in my car? It gets tucked away in one of those little side pockets on the driver and front passenger doors, and when I get home, I grab a bag to put it all in and then throw it out in my house or my outside trash can. I’ve seen people throw entire bags of fast food remnants out of their car windows. Human beings are some of the most disgusting creatures on the planet. With all the talk about global warming and climate change, I think we should start with something simple like not throwing trash on the ground. Where do you think that all goes? Well, first off, it gets blown or washed from the gutters into the storm drains. Then you wonder why your street floods when there’s a heavy rain? The saddest part of this whole thing is, I keep thinking about that little girl who got dropped off at daycare across the street. Unfortunately, she may be furthering the lack of care for the world around her because she has a mother who is showing her that it’s okay to just throw garbage on the ground. All we can hope for is that she will be around other people during her day who will show her the right way of doing things – perhaps like her daycare provider. This is a hot button issue with me, so much so that I want to scream at people on the street when I see them do this. Instead, I mutter to myself under my breath, bite my tongue – and pick up someone else’s trash.