September 09, 2003

Taking out the trash...

Laurence Simon over at Amish Tech Support walks home from work every day. He sees a lot of litter. He hates litter:

Know what really chafes my ass, besides ill-fitting boxers during my 2.4 mile walk home?

Litter. Litter chafes my ass.

When I walk past litter, I pick it up and I pitch it. It's a bad-good habit of mine, and if I don't toss litter out it drives me nuts for an hour or two. If this is obsessive-compulsive behavior at its worst, then may everybody come down with it.

His message to the Blogosphere:

My challenge to the blogosphere is to pick up one piece of trash and toss it in a trash recepticle. Blog about it if you have to. But for God's sake, clean all this crap up.

Our son is three-and-a-half. He hates litter, too. Whenever he sees a chip bag or chocolate bar wrapper on the ground, he points it out, and says "A bad man dropped that! He's bad!"

He then picks it up, and puts it in the nearest garbage container.

I'm proud of our son. I wish more people had kids like this.

Posted by Squiddy at September 9, 2003 08:28 AM | TrackBack
Comments

This story brings to mind something that happened some years back:

while strolling through the park one day (tra-la) with a young lady who had spent considerable time in Chicago during the reign of Daley the First, I picked up a piece of litter, intending to throw it in a receptacle. She said (I'm paraphrasing here, it was a long time ago): "Don't do that! There's someone whose job it is to pick that up. Do you want to put him out of work? His family will have to go on welfare. Put that back on the ground!" Because she was beautiful, I followed instructions. If only I'd known of the concept of opportunity cost, and Bastiat's exposition of the broken window fallacy, at the time, I might have been able to explain to her why that man might have had a better job.

Good for your son. I have not seen that young lady in quite a while, but still pick up litter. I wonder if her views have changed?

Seems like no HTML in comments: Rand Simberg discusses broken window fallacy here, with link to the original essay:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,96418,00.html

Posted by: Jim Bennett at September 10, 2003 09:14 PM

I've always been one to gather up detritus strewn about. I hate to see things looking like no one cares. I care! But, cleaning up trash took on a new level of importance after the kids came along.

My kids and I have a policy, we see a piece of trash, we pick it up and throw it away. This started back when my daughter was very little. I had told her one day that littering made the earth sad.

Later, we'd be out walking and she would burst into tears at the sight of litter. I'd ask her why she was crying and she'd say that she felt bad. I'd ask why again and she'd tell me it was because someone had littered. And, if it made the earth sad, it made her sad.

Ever since then, we've picked up trash as a family.

Posted by: Da Goddess at September 17, 2003 08:28 PM