Sigh.
I don't want to hate people, but people just make me hate them.
The entrance to our neighborhood is off a pretty busy road. There is an entrance to an apartment complex further down that road. It seems every few months someone will leave the apartment complex and forget to throw their trash in the dumpster before they pull out of the complex. It's one of those places where they have the one big trash compactor near the entrance of the complex, people don't want trash in their car, so they set the bag on their trunk or roof. If they forget that it's there and they they pull out onto the main road the trash will fall off the car and into the road, usually somewhere in front of our neighborhood. The trash bag will get run over by other motorists and the garbage from it usually ends up scattered along the roadside and getting blown into the landscaping along our neighborhoods frontage. I think this looks like shit. I'm on the HOA board, I know no one is going to clean it up, so when this happens I usually get a trashbag some rubber gloves and spend a half hour of my day picking up trash on the side of the road. I've gotten used to it, it's not so bad. I don't know if anyone in the neighborhood even notices that I do it. I don't really care if they do, I feel better knowing our community doesn't look like a dump.
Last night I came home and driving past the entrance to the neighborhood I saw that it had happened again and their was trash scattered all over the place. So I grab a trashbag and headed out there. While I'm picking up trash three young men (the sort that have the waistband of their pants far below their waists) walk past me (presumably from the apartment complex down the road). They ask me if I'm bing paid to pick up the trash. I tell them I am not being paid for it. They laugh and tell me "You know they pay people to do that?". They walk off laughing amongst themselves. I go back to picking up trash. A while later (30-45 minutes) I'm almost done and I see the same three young men walking back from the wherever they have been. They are carrying snacks, sodas, Doritos, some chocolate covered doughnuts, etc.. As they pass this time they say "How's it going trashman?" I ignore them. They get about 15' past me and they crumple up a soda can and throw it back at me. I pick it up and ask them why they did that. They respond by chanting "You da tashman! You da trashman!". There are three of them, one of me, I figure I'll just let it go. As I walk back towards the entrance of the neighborhood I see they have taken the wrappers of their other snacks and drinks and tossed them into our landscaping.
I find it really sad that their are people out there that would take pleasure in ruining someone else's day. It was amusing to these guys to know that I was out there picking up trash on my own time, so they decided to add to my work. I guess they don't mind their homes looking like a dump, but I like mine to look nice. I hope there is a thing called karma, and it bites those three squarely in the ass.
lusone:
