One of the things that I do while walking with Calvin is to pick up trash. Not the real gooey stuff but paper, cans, bottles, that sort of thing. Sometimes I take a plastic bag with me. However, usually it is the convenient litter that I can carry without much trouble. I'm not an overzealous public servant. I especially collect the junk thrown out on my street. I get really annoyed on Sunday mornings on the way to church when I see fast-food wrappers, paper bags and cups littering the streets of my neighborhood and it especially bugs me to see it at the entrances. What that tells me is that, while returning home, my neighbors stopped to get fast-food, ate it then threw the trash out the window in our neighborhood blocks from their homes. They had no pride, no desire to see their neighborhood clean and free of garbage.
I have collected a lot of interesting trash over the last year or so since Calvin and I have walked the sidewalks of our neighborhood. I have found a total of close to $50.00, a winning $5.00 lottery scratch off ticket and even someone’s driver’s license. It pays to look down and bend over, at times.
Anyway, I picked up this empty cigarette pack. It promised the user that they would experience freedom. Death, maybe? That is a form of freedom. Then I noticed that, tucked into the cellophane wrapper in the back, was a note with a telephone number and a name; John. As I imagine it, John met Litterer in a bar. They had a drink. They talked business or they were thinking in romantic terms. Whatever the situation, John gave Litterer his phone number expecting a call. Litterer inserted it in the back of his cigarette pack then put it into a pocket or purse. Unfortunately, Litterer smoked the last cigarette, apparently forgot about the note with the phone number and tossed the empty pack out the window where it lay nested in the soft green grass at the end of my street for me to find. It now resides in my trash can waiting to be taken to its final resting place. I like to imagine that Litterer regrets losing John’s phone number. One of those guilty pleasures of the mind. It would be a small measure of poetic justice for littering my neighborhood. Regardless, I don’t think John is going to get that call he is expecting, sorry John.
I have collected a lot of interesting trash over the last year or so since Calvin and I have walked the sidewalks of our neighborhood. I have found a total of close to $50.00, a winning $5.00 lottery scratch off ticket and even someone’s driver’s license. It pays to look down and bend over, at times.
Anyway, I picked up this empty cigarette pack. It promised the user that they would experience freedom. Death, maybe? That is a form of freedom. Then I noticed that, tucked into the cellophane wrapper in the back, was a note with a telephone number and a name; John. As I imagine it, John met Litterer in a bar. They had a drink. They talked business or they were thinking in romantic terms. Whatever the situation, John gave Litterer his phone number expecting a call. Litterer inserted it in the back of his cigarette pack then put it into a pocket or purse. Unfortunately, Litterer smoked the last cigarette, apparently forgot about the note with the phone number and tossed the empty pack out the window where it lay nested in the soft green grass at the end of my street for me to find. It now resides in my trash can waiting to be taken to its final resting place. I like to imagine that Litterer regrets losing John’s phone number. One of those guilty pleasures of the mind. It would be a small measure of poetic justice for littering my neighborhood. Regardless, I don’t think John is going to get that call he is expecting, sorry John.
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