It doesn’t take much to set fire to the short fuse temper I have with inconsiderate people.
These people range from those who drive 45 mph in the left lane of a major interstate to those who won’t step out of a crowded restaurant when their toddler is screaming bloody murder.
But this time it was a litterbug that made my skin crawl. I thought my hands were washed clean of these scumbags when the green movement came through but I was sorely mistaken, thanks to a Mississippi State University student walking through the Junction. Let me explain.
While on a walk from the Cotton District to campus on a comfortably warm and sunny day, a young lady came out of Barnes & Noble and started walking a few feet in front of me toward Dorman Hall. I already had a notion about the size of her carbon footprint after noticing she was drinking water from a non-disposable bottle, but when she threw the bottle on the ground without missing a step, my jaw almost hit the concrete. I mean, really?
The worst part about the whole situation was that she went into Dorman Hall, meaning she could have easily held the bottle a couple hundred feet and dropped it in one of the many trash cans outside of the building. Instead she threw it on the ground and left it waiting for someone else to pick it up. But to her detriment, I, along with my low tolerance for her kind, happened to be that person.
“Excuse me, I think you dropped this,” I said, hoping maybe she had an arm spasm and didn’t realize she dropped the trash but really just giving her one chance to take responsibility for her action.
“No, I was done with that,” the litterbug replied before whipping her head back around.
She missed her chance for redemption. I got her attention again and asked why she didn’t just put it in her backpack until she got to her class and what she said blew my mind: “I knew if somebody had a problem with it they would pick it up and look, you did, so there you go.”
I’m going to say she should be thankful for the abundant sunshine and The Black Keys’ Attack and Release pumping from my iPod during my walk that day. Otherwise, instead of just swallowing and throwing the bottle in the nearest trashcan, I would have let her know just how upset I get about littering.
I blame it on my mother, really. In high school, she grounded me longer for throwing some bunched up napkins out of my car window than when she and my father found a case of beer and a bottle of whiskey in the trunk of my car along with the list I wrote for my legal-aged sister so she wouldn’t forget what I wanted.
For the remainder of my walk to the bakery on campus I noticed more random trash – gum wrappers, cigarette butts, note cards and a few Chik-fil-A branded items – and thought of how this problem could be solved.
I thought maybe the campus police and ticket-givers could start issuing tickets to those they catch littering, but then I remembered they are way too busy slapping tickets on windshields.
It would be more effective, and way cooler, if the students were allowed to clothesline people when they are caught littering, but the meatheads would just get nasty and spiteful – “Oh dude, sorry. I thought I saw you drop that gum wrapper, my bad. You hit the ground pretty hard. I think we need to get you to the hospital like, ASAP.”
The only solution I can think of is calling people out when they are spotted littering and even throwing the trash they dropped back at them after asking them if they deliberately dropped it. After all, muscle spasms are a very serious problem that should not be taken lightly, and we don’t want to wrongly place blame on the muscularly involuntary or the innocent.
But for the deliberate litterbugs, I say give ’em hell, and that includes the smokers throwing cigarette butts on the ground. In fact, make sure to give the ones littering cigarette butts a heavy amount of hell – and that’s coming from someone who enjoys lighting up.
Although it’s rare I walk and smoke, if I do puff while walking I roll out the remaining tobacco and ‘cherry’ when I’m through and carry the paper until I find a trashcan. I am a very lazy person so if I can make the effort, anyone can. I have yet to understand what goes through a person’s head to make them throw trash on the ground instead of holding it until they see a trash can.
Is it the university’s fault? Maybe we need more trash cans spread out around campus and along the sidewalks to discourage students from littering. Either way, I still put the full blame on the individual because if there is one rule we’ve all heard since we could walk it was to “pick up after yourself.”
So litterbugs, consider this your warning – if I’m behind you when you litter, you can expect to soon hear a stampede of angry people with pitchforks and torches gaining on your tail, and then hopefully you’ll think twice about dropping that empty chicken nugget box or water bottle.
Bailey Singletary is the entertainment editor of The Reflector. She can be contacted at [email protected].