Littered

            The sidewalk was covered with papers, wrappers, plastic cups, cellophane, and dingy newspapers. It swirled around in the morning breeze and blew across my path. It was a mini-tornado of filth I had to try and dodge. It got me wondering about all that anti-littering propaganda that consumed the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, at least before being pushed to the wayside by the onslaught of HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns.

            I noticed a tremendous amount of filth and litter as I walked along the sidewalk toward my train this morning. It was everywhere and I couldn’t comprehend where the wheels on the anti-littering bus fell off. My generation was hounded by Woodsy the Owl and other Native American images begging us to keep our cities and parks clean by not littering. There where times when you couldn’t turn a corner without Woodsy’s big owl head staring at you with his giant dead eyes, hooting his message of not polluting so we can help keep America looking good.

            Weren’t the young people of today being force fed this pollution awareness information like I was? Aren’t there posters and teachers aides pushing the anti-littering rhetoric into the brains of America’s youth? Or have the big corporations finally hunted Woodsy and his kin to the point of extinction? Did they trap them in some secluded wooded cabin and force them to watch as everyone ate from Styrofoam containers and then threw it out the window?

            The tornado of dirt blew down the street as I walked by and I just had to shake my head. If I wasn’t in such a morning hurry I would have stopped to pick the larger bits of trash up. Unless it had dog poop on it, then I’m not touching it. But I still wondered where this generation had lost their way on the whole, “Don’t throw your garbage on the ground”, thing. It was shameful really.

            There just seems to be a lot of trash blowing around these days. I can’t really say if it’s more than what I remember from my youth. I just really noticed the abundance of it. My mother’s house is a prime example of the lack of concern some people show regarding their litterbug ways. She lives on a residential block but somehow, her front lawn is often littered with potato chip bags, candy wrappers and empty bottles; pop and beer bottles in fact.  It’s as if slobs just open their car doors and sweep the refuse out onto the lawn. It’s very annoying.

            I’ve had windshield flyers in my car for years after they were placed there by some unscrupulous business person rather than just toss them to the ground. It’s so ingrained in me to not litter that the very thought of just tossing a wrapper or paper on the ground is sickening. I think my generation were given electro-shock treatments as children as part of a littering aversion program. Then they erased our memories of the event and filled it with visions of the nuclear family.

            I’d like to see some new anti-littering material on TV and the internet. MTV could possibly step in with some more awareness programming and maybe have the Jersey Shore/Real World/Teen Moms casts get the word out about anti-littering along with their douchebag/double douchebag/teen sex messages. Couldn’t hurt to add that in right?

Please don’t print this out and then litter with it. C’mon, that wouldn’t be cool. Come back Woodsy the Owl, rise from your grave and stalk the littering living.