Who's going to clean up this mess?!

 I’m growing to love my little neighborhood in Queens. It’s close to everything, so I can walk to the grocery, the butcher, the dentist, the pharmacy, and my favorite bodega selling homemade honey-ginger tea with lemon. Apart from the occasional parking space altercation, people look out for one another. But there’s one thing I don’t think I’ll ever get used to, and that’s all the trash on the sidewalks. I see it everywhere and want to shout, “All the world is not your trash bin, people!”

It seems that once a person litters, it gives lots of others permission to dump in the same spot. Every crumpled-up McDonald’s bag, candy wrapper, snotty Kleenex or used condom tossed on the ground is like an afront to me.

I often see baggies of dog poop, all tied up, just left on the sidewalk, and that really puzzles me. Kudos to those who go to all the trouble of bagging their dog’s mess. But then, why do they just leave the bag for someone else to dispose of? I can’t even…!

I’ve been wondering why this bothers me so much. It’s deeper than an esthetic gripe I have. Yes, I’d rather not see ugly trash while I’m walking around in my neighborhood. But the sight of it actually pokes at one of my pet peeves. It really grinds me when people leave a mess for other people to clean up. Is there anything more self-centered and inconsiderate than that?  It goes way beyond trashing the sidewalk. It can also mean irreparably harming a child or bombing the homes of innocent people or destroying an ecosystem. Who’s going to clean up this mess?!

None of this is to say that I haven’t been known to create messes of my own because I certainly have. I suspect we all do, from time to time. But I’d like to believe I don’t leave my messes for someone else to clean up if I can at all help it. When I finish a drink, I don’t throw the paper cup on the ground for someone else to pick up; I carry it home and throw it in the trash. If I use the toilet and the toilet paper runs out, I don’t leave the empty core for the next person; I replace the toilet paper. In the same way, if I have hurt you with my careless words, I will do what I can to make things right with you. If I find out that I can change a simple behavior to make the earth a healthier place for people I will never know, I do it. I try to show consideration for the people who will come after me.

As a woman, a mother, and a pastor, I’ve spent a lot of my life cleaning up other’s people’s messes and I’ve reached an age where it’s all I can do to keep up with my own messes. I can’t be responsible for yours. Is it asking too much to expect people to clean up their own messes?

*Deep breath*

Okay. I’m done. I’m better now. (Until I go outside and look at the sidewalk.)

The Amazing Guy Upstairs

The guy upstairs often amazes me. No, I’m not talking about God here. I’m talking about the man who dwells in the top two stories of the house where I live, above the lower level where I am. His name is Jon, and he’s married to my daughter, Gretchen. He’s also the father of my grandsons, Nick and Justin. In addition to being the kind of dad who tosses a football with his sons, patiently helps them with their homework, and prepares their favorite mac-n-cheese for dinner, he has a special dad-gift that never ceases to amaze me.

With a background in screenwriting, Jon is a true cinephile. I’d bet on him every time in a movie trivia contest. He has instilled this same passion in his sons from birth. Their vacation itinerary is often designed around visiting places where films were shot as the boys re-enact the scenes. Nine-year-old Nick has learned to write screenplays, and he’s always working on one at the computer. When the Academy Awards are on, it’s his favorite night of the year. He’s becoming a cinephile in his own right.

The age gap between Nick and Justin, age 5, presents a challenge to the movie-viewing in our family. This is most evident on Friday night, our movie night, when it sometimes takes us as long to decide what movie we’ll watch as it does to actually watch it.

We adults can only watch so many PG movies before we need something more.  R rated movies, of course, are off limits for family viewing right now. And that leaves us with the wide-open category of PG-13 movies to choose from.

PG-13 movies cover a wide range of sex, violence, language issues that leave most parents struggling to decide whether their kids can appropriately watch them. But this is no challenge for Jon; he’s something of a movie-rating savant. He can tell us exactly why each movie is rated as it is and if Nick or both boys can handle it. And then, his magical movie powers go way beyond that. Not only does he know which movies are inappropriate and which pass the test, but if the movie is just a tad inappropriate, he also knows exactly when the bad parts occur so he can censor the movie while we’re watching it. He knows just when to cover Justin’s face, or cough loudly to bleep out the sound. And he can do this for hundreds of movies! (Occasionally, a movie will come up that he hasn’t seen and he’ll preview it, but that’s rarely necessary.)

How does he do this?! I’m a movie fan, too, but I’m at the age now when I can scarcely recall what a movie is about. I’m often half-way through it before I realize I’ve already seen it. So I couldn’t begin to remember if an F-bomb occurs in the dialogue and exactly when so that I can bleep over it before it happens. I am continuously amazed by Jon’s ability to do this. You wouldn’t think this uncanny ability to recall sex, violence, and swearing would be all that useful, as information goes, but as a father who likes to watch movies with his sons, it’s invaluable.

I’ve told him that he needs to make a podcast or write a blog for other parents to help them through this minefield, but don’t look for that anytime soon. He’s too busy watching movies with his boys.