This afternoon our quiet residential street has cars parked at intervals on both sides, and little kids riding their bikes when here comes a car going over the speed limit, passing us in our car, which was dangerous (thank God he didn’t hit the children!) as well as annoying. I said, “He must not live here.” Our street could dead end into another, but instead does a zigzag to a street that has nothing on it and serves only as a passage to a main road. Before the driver reached the end of our street he threw a styrofoam cup out the window, then blew through the stop sign where our street tees out, making the predicted right to the cut-through to the main road.
The presence of the two young girls on bikes, and other kids playing in yards was probably the only thing keeping the various parents and adults supervising them and gardening on this idyllic day in this otherwise quiet neighborhood from cussing out the reckless driver. Although I might add that the English language seems inadequate to describe his actions and my rage. Perhaps some other language has a word for it.
What to know what I did on Earth Day? I planted two trees in the backyard, read The World Is Blue by Sylvia Earle—and walked down to the other end of the street and picked up the cup pitched out by the asshole interloper. Wondering all the while why the guy washing his truck (soapy water running down the drain and eventually out to the Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico) didn’t walk over and pick it up.
Happy Earth Day.
Cecile Brunner rose, photo by Ainy Rainwater
