Last week was Spring Clean up - that's where you can put all sorts of crap at the end of your driveway and the city hauls it away for no extra cost. After living here for several years, I am still amazed at how much junk people can accumulate in a year. And also, I ponder the types of things that people throw away.
When I was a kid, we treasured all our possessions and treated them well. Games had all the pieces, records weren't scratched, Lego's and Barbie shoes were rarely lost. But now, at the end of many driveways site large collections of children's ruined bicycles, fallen apart furniture and giant stuffed animals. What happens to these large stuffed animals? I guess the biggest problem is that they are too big for the washer and therefore difficult to clean - but how dirty do they get? I don't think one of my stuffed animals was ever thrown away, except maybe the really old ones that were filled with sawdust (back in the day) and either the dog got to it, or a mouse did a number on it when it was in a box in storage.
But also interesting to me is what's left a week later. There are restrictions to the type of items left on the street (such as old wood) and the amount - some people had heaps that spanned 10' across and 8' high. There seems to be a couple houses on each street that has debris left over. But the debris piles have not been cleaned up. They sit. And kids muck about in them and spread more debris. The weekend's passed but no one removed it. Not even for Mother's Day. It's just left to sit at the end of the driveway. I guess these people are too lazy - perhaps they figure they did all the work to haul it to the end of the driveway that their job is done. Meanwhile their neighbours have to endure the mess. What an eyesore! It's very disappointing that they don't care that their crap is piled in front of their house for 2 weeks (or more, God forbid). I wonder how long it'll take, I'll let you know when the three houses on my street have cleaned up.
Also, while walking the dog this morning, I came across fresh graffiti on a fence next to a park. The word? "Ass Monkey". If you'd like to be enlightened in slang, here are some definitions. And this is how you can use the word in a sentence: Hey neighbour, don't be an ass monkey and clean up your garbage.
1 comment:
We don't have that service here. We're not even allowed to leave stuff out for freebies in the alley. The city is afraid it will sit there and become an eye sore (it rarely does...everything is someone's treasure). My mom said when she was a kid, the dump used to be open and you could pick things out of it. Seems to me that makes a lot of sense. At the very least, the city ought to have an on-site thriftstore for stuff that is still good. It's a win-win: the city would make money, and people could find good deals. It never makes sense to me when people throw stuff away rarely than donate it. Even broken bicycles can be repaired, or artists can use the parts in their creations. But we still have a disposable-thinking society, and products are made to break so shiny new ones can be purchased. Sad.
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