garbage

Is it just the word? Garbage. Who likes that? As for junk or refuse (an intriguing word in its own right) or waste or disposed-of goods or detritus or trash or debris or rubbish or crud or crap or effluvium, take your pick of the litter. It's all there for the taking. And this is the season for these trash pickups, these communal spring cleanings, the feel-good pick-me-ups loosely or closely connected to Earth Day. Nothing wrong with these bursts of civic pride. Nothing amiss with these well intentioned forays into beautification (or tidiness, at the least). But lately I've come to a reluctant if tentative conclusion: the people who litter -- those who are filled with careless disregard or self-loathing or appalling civic indifference --  are not the folks who are manning the cleanups. I can't prove this. I have no evidence, not exactly. Yet, to my meager mind it stands to reason: no one who picks this crap up wants to add to it again, flippantly, the next day or the next week. Wouldn't you think: why litter in the first place? Sadly, I suspect such thoughts do not invade the brain pan of the litter-perpetrators, the litter-perps, the LPs.

Another thought: those who brandish patriotism or jingoism or American exceptionalism like a bald eagle's talons are loath to admit this: we Americans are a pretty sloppy lot, often filthy, frequently just-plain dirty. Look around. No, I don't mean some scenic Grand Canyon vista. Look down at your feet. (It's regional, you say? Naw. I've seen how ubiquitous litter is in many locales, in many regions.) Oh. You say, it was not I who littered? That might be true. But if you were the one who walked by the pack of Newports or the McDonald's wrapper or plastic bag and just "let it be," what's the difference?

Garbage, by any other name.