Or at least, that's what we tell ourselves. We look around at the very big problems in our very big world and ask, "What can one person do?"
Maybe nothing... or maybe everything.
Today, I did something I always say I'm going to do. No, not exercise... it wasn't that extreme!
But while out for a walk, I stopped and picked up a piece of garbage. And as I continued strolling along, I picked up another... and then another.
While I'm not generally grateful to folks who litter, I was pleased to find a plastic shopping back caught in the branches of a bush. Plucking it free gave me something in which to stash my collection... and allowed me to add to it.
I won't say that one man's trash is another man's treasure, because it's not like karma rewarded my efforts by leading me to a winning lottery ticket someone had discarded.
But I did find myself feeling as if I'd made a difference.
A teeny, tiny difference to be sure... but it was a small step... and one I'm hoping might lead to others joining my trashy parade.
Imagine if all of us picked up one piece of trash a day.
Just one.
Every single one of us, every single day.
Sure, we'd still be outnumbered -- and outlittered -- by folks who treat the planet like their own personal dumping ground, but it'd be a start.
Miss Betty Bowers, aka America's Best Christian, advises the "ham-fisted prairie yokels with... conspicuous unfamiliarity with hair conditioner” of Westboro Baptist Church on the proper way to hate. This, folks, is biting, not-quite-safe-for-work satire at its best. Enjoy!
It’s safe to say that NRA president Wayne LaPierre’s recent press conference didn’t go exactly as he’d hoped. But really, he has only himself to blame. Had he turned to television, the very box on which he heaped so much scorn, he easily could have avoided becoming the nation’s punching bag. How? By looking to these television figures for guidance...
1) Helen Lovejoy, The Simpsons
The wife of Springfield’s favorite holy man, Reverend Lovejoy, Helen is perhaps best known for breaking into tears and declaring, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?” Unfortunately, LaPierre was so busy thinking about protecting firearms that he failed to take her advice. As a result, he wound up suggesting that the ideal solution to the problem would be to send kids into schools that, with his organization’s help, would become armed camps. Not exactly what most parents consider an ideal situation.
2) Data, Star Trek: The Next Generation
Like failed presidential candidate Mitt Romney before him, LaPierre made the crucial error of failing to activate the emotion chip that would have allowed him to have the appropriate — i.e., human — response to a national tragedy.
3) The Parents of South Park
In looking to place blame on anything but guns, LaPierre listed a host of things which he believed had triggered, for lack of a better word, the attack. Violent video games? Check. Movies and television? Check. Hurricane Sandy? Er… check. But he forgot to point the finger at the one place we long ago learned, courtesy of the brilliant minds behind South Park, that all bad things come from: Canada!
4) Sue Sylvester, Glee
Mr. LaPierre had nearly a week to prepare his remarks, which means there was plenty of time to run that speech up the flag pole and maybe see how a focus group or two responded. If what you're about to say in the real world sounds as ridiculously offensive to the average listener as something everyone's favorite fictional acerbic cheerleading coach might say? Go back to the drawing board.
5) Rachel Maddow, The Rachel Maddow Show
Come on, dude! Maddow is in what you would most definitely consider the enemy camp, and she straight-up warned you what the reaction would be if you stood before the country and said... well, exactly what you said! To borrow a metaphore you most certainly would approve of, forewarned is forearmed! And it doesn't come much more forewarned than what Maddow said during her MSNBC show on the night before your press conference:
"If what you hear at [Friday's NRA press conference] is an NRA leader lamenting violent video games or calling for us to study mental health issues in this country, be aware that while those may be things that we should do... they are also ways for the NRA to just avoid talking about guns. If the NRA is prepared to make meaningful contributions to make sure that elementary school children are not massacred again in our country in their classrooms, they will need to talk about guns. That's where they are powerful. They will need to talk about the work they do to keep gun laws the way they are. If they do not talk about guns tomorrow, then this news conference... is a sideshow. It is a distraction from a policy debate that we needed to start having many, many years ago."
In this preview of the work in progress Homesick, we join high schooler Erica Allen, whose fellow students are about to tell her something very disturbing about the home her family recently moved into...
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Wait, whose house is haunted?” asked Erica, looking up from the lunch she’d been half-heartedly picking at while allowing her mind to drift away from the conversation and toward thoughts of defying both the calorie gods and her fellow cheerleaders by walking straight up to the counter and exchanging her limp-leafed salad for a large order of fries. Maybe even two.
“Yours!” said Susie. “God, were you not even listening?”
“Haunted?” repeated Erica. “My house. Haunted. And you’re only now getting around to mentioning this?”
“Puh-lease,” interjected Traci Lerner, giving Susie a withering look before turning her attention back to Erica. “Nobody in the history of ever said word one about there being a ghost or a poltergeist whatever in that house.”
Despite the absurdity of the conversation, let alone the notion, Erica took comfort in Traci’s words. “I guess that’s kind of a relief,” she admitted, trying to laugh it off even as she acknowledged that a haunting might explain what she’d been feeling since moving in. “Not that I believe in that kind of stuff, but… ”
Traci interrupted. “Susie is the worst when it comes to expressing herself. She’s always saying something that isn’t what she really means. She spent years saying ‘for all intensive purposes’ instead of ‘for all intents and purposes.’ It’s going to be a major problem for her when it comes time to take the SAT’s.”
“So what did she mean to say?” asked Erica, wishing she was the kind of person who could leave the unspoken question unanswered and instead focus on Susie’s academic shortcomings.
“It’s no biggie,” insisted Traci, reaching across the table to take a radish that had seen better days off Erica’s salad. “There’s some weird-ass story about the family that used to live in your house, like, ages ago. Like, back in the 1970’s or something.”
Don’t ask don’t ask don’t ask don’t… “What kind of story?” Erica asked a little too intensely.
“The kind that starts with a boy meeting a girl and ends in total tragedy,” exclaimed Susie in an obvious attempt to regain the conversational spotlight. “And death. So yeah, the house may or may not be haunted, but people totally died there.”
I know this blog is called How Rude Are You. But what if, in the come-as-you-aren’t spirit of Halloween, we turned it on its head?
What if, at least for that one spooktacular day, we thought of it instead as How Polite Can You Be?
Maybe Casper can be our unofficial spooksperson?
What do I mean by that? I mean… on Oct. 31, rather than curse out the driver who cuts you off, exhale and be glad you didn’t have an accident. Rather than ignore the cashier who rings up your groceries, say, “Hi, how’s your day?” Rather than glare at the pedestrian who bumps into you as if you’re demanding an apology, apologize first.
Be nice.
It feels good.
I’m not naïve enough to think that, if we try this for a day, we’ll end up deciding to be kinder, gentler people every day. (This blog is hardly as widely read as, say, TMZ, and understandably so. When have we ever scored pictures of a buck-naked royal or a“Real Housewife” having a meltdown?) But there’s a slim chance that it could make a few of us more polite, more often, right? And isn’t that a less frightening prospect on this, the scariest of all days, than the alternative?
If none of us change for the better, we could all just keep getting worse.
earth day, 