I will never understand the human race. What is it within us that makes people live and act like animals? I am speaking specifically about littering. Everyone sees it on a daily bases, people just throwing their waste on the streets. Usually it’s something small in nature, but that still doesn’t make it acceptable.
The other night I was driving up 5th Ave. near the police department substation and noticed that there was an abundance of garbage strewn about the streets. Everything from cups, wrappers, chip bags, bottles… you name it. I thought to myself, “the nerve of these people doing this right under the nose of the police department.” Some people just don’t care about the conditions that they live in let alone the conditions they make others live in.
The following night I attended the monthly city council meeting. During the public comment period several people got up and spoke about individual’s civil liberties and how they are being violated in the city of Troy. Let me preface my thoughts by saying I am not dismissing the notion that certain individual’s liberties may have been violated or not. That got me to thinking, what about my neighbors and my civil liberties? We are the ones who are trying to uphold some level of decency in our community while there is an overabundance of people who wish to crap on it. Excuse my language but this upsets me. Drive through South Troy or North Central and tell me if the majority of the people that live there care about OUR civil liberties. While there are a few people in those neighborhoods that do care and do their best to improve them by organizing weekly cleanups and even spend their own money to buy and plant flowers just for those who could care less continue to litter and kill and steal the flowers. To continue to see these things happen and hear the stories drives me insane.
This brings me to today while I was traveling up River Street and just as I was passing Flanagan Square I saw a woman throw two empty soda bottles, an assortment of wrappers, and cigarette butts out her parked car window onto the street. I pulled up alongside her and asked, “What the hell are you thinking?” She ignored me. So, I asked again, “why would you choose to do something like that?” She answered by saying, “What the “f” are you talking about?”
At this point I noticed that she was an adult woman, not a teen, just and immature adult. “Why would you throw your garbage all over the street like that,” I asked. She replied by telling me to get the “f” out of her way because she had to go into her house. I then asked, “You live here? Why couldn’t you have brought all that into the house and thrown it away?” At that point she called me a few choice words. I then gave her two options. I said, “Mam, I don’t appreciate people who treat my city as a dump. There are people who work hard to make the place we all live the best that it can be. I am asking you to put your ignorance aside and pick up what I just watched you throw out your window that happens to be in front of the house where you live and if you choose not to you’ll have to explain to the police why you choose to make all of us suffer because you choose to live like a slob.” She thought for a moment, climbed out of her car and picked up her mess and then some. I thanked her for making the right decision and continued on my merry way.
This is OUR Troy, we own it trough our hard work, sweat, and taxes. We need to stand up and fight for what’s ours and protect it, if not us who will? No one. And if that happens we’ll just waste away.
