A Few Minutes With Who?

Often the thing that sets us off is something really small, really inconsequential. By itself a lot of times it would go by almost unnoticed but when piled on top of a series of events, all of them minor, that one small thing can send us into a Howard Beal “I'm mad as Hell and I’m not going to take it any more!” moment.

Well I just had mine. Why can’t they make waste baskets the same size as the trash can liners? Or turn it around, why can’t they make trash can liners that don’t slip off the edge of the waste basket.

It’s garbage in there. I don’t want to handle the stuff anymore that’s why I threw it away. So why does the bag keep slipping off the edge and into the trash can? Yeah, I know I can get ever larger bags that hang over the outside of the bin by about 2 feet but I really don’t need a bag that’s big enough to park a Geo Metro inside.

There’s just two of us here. We recycle. We don’t generate all that much trash compared to a lot of families. We rarely fill the tall kitchen bag size we use so why do I have to keep tugging on the damn thing to get it to actually line the trash can?

Pedestrians annoy me too. Not all pedestrians, just the ones who wander into the street like preoccupied toddlers. Understand that I grew up in an area where those on foot are usually granted no quarter.

You step off the curb you’re a marked man, or woman. It’s not that drivers actually seek out pedestrians in the Boston area, we just don’t take that “pedestrians have the right of way” stuff that seriously. To us they’re more like targets of opportunity.

This keeps most of them walking at a more brisk pace which is undoubtedly better for all concerned. It’s good for their whole cardiovascular system and they’re less likely to be an impediment to vehicular traffic.

But in Concord, New Hampshire pedestrians are treated like an endangered species - which is of course what they can rapidly become in Boston. In good old Concord all you have to do is stand on the sidewalk and turn to face the street and people hit the brakes.

Which breeds a whole race of people who don’t understand the singular disadvantage you’re under when you’re a pedestrian on a roadway. The worst offenders are the ones in the area of the State House but we’ll save that particular breed of bird for another load of buckshot on another day.

Listen up people. Traffic laws are there for all of us but there needs to be a little common sense at work here. A vehicle weighing over a ton traveling at a mere 30 miles per hour can do some serious damage. I’m not saying I’d intentionally do anything that would be harmful to anyone I’m just saying that Darwin’s “natural selection” may come into play.

You need to think of the traffic code as Captain Barbossa thought of the Pirates Code, “the code is more what you'd call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules.”