A Little Bit of Room

My wife and I have been watching a lot of those shows on HGTV where people are either buying a house or fixing up a house. Sometimes the people are selling their current home and buying a new home. I especially like the episodes where they’re fixing up an older house, where they gut it down to the studs and the subflooring, and then redo it all up to so-called modern standards. That’s a talent that I definitely do not have.

However, there is one thing that really annoys me as I watch these shows. Most times, there is a couple with one or two kids, and every once in a while, there are three kids. I guess that is the typical family today and I fit into that category with my own. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s the way the people have to have a monster home, and every kid has to have their own bedroom and bathroom. Okay, so I exaggerate slightly about each kid having their own bathroom, but only a little. Many people say they absolutely need 3000+ square feet, at least three bathrooms, a fully finished basement, and the obligatory “open concept” main floor.

Really? There are only four people in most of these families and they must have these ridiculous sized houses. At one time, when all nine kids were still living at home, we had about 1000 square feet, three bedrooms, one bathroom (that is NOT a misprint) and no basement, finished or unfinished. Was it a bit crowded? Yes, it was. Did we need more room? Yes, we did, but that didn’t come for a few years, and until the three older ones were out of the house. How did we do it? We just did, just like a lot of other families did back then.

We shared bedrooms. Mom and Dad had theirs; another bedroom had two sets of bunk beds and another bed in the middle for the five oldest boys; and the third bedroom had two double beds, one for me and my younger brother and one for the two girls. So not only did we share bedrooms, we shared beds. Like I said, we made it work, we had no other choice really. But, it wasn’t just that we gritted our teeth and toughed it out, we actually didn’t mind it. At least I didn’t.

There was something about lying in bed, talking, laughing, and telling stories that I wouldn’t have traded for anything, even my own room. It built a great friendship between my younger brother and me, and with my sister who is a year older than me (the “Three Little Ones”). If we had each had our own room, I don’t think we would have had that. And I don’t think I would have learned to get along with others as well either, because being together in such tight quarters teaches you some great life lessons – sharing, respecting each other and each other’s space, working out a conflict, and compromise. It’s best to learn those at home while younger than learn them the hard way later in life.

I still watch those HGTV shows, even if they do annoy me at times. The people that think they’re doing their family a favor by buying huge houses where each person gets their own wing of the house will find out some day that they missed something. It wasn’t space, nor was it amenities, but something far more important; time together in the same room.

Respect for Police

Last week was a horrible week around here with the Boston Marathon bombings and the subsequent manhunt, shootings and capture of one of the bombers. Things like that are just not supposed to happen around here and it was quite shocking. There are many people whose lives will never be the same. Though this was a tragic, horrific attack, one good thing that has come out of it is the newfound respect for our first responders, especially the police. Police officers, firemen and EMT’s all rushed to help those hurt, seemingly without regard for their own life and not knowing if there were more bombs set to go off.

People cheering for and applauding the police is not something you see much anymore. Most of the time they are being yelled at, or spoken about poorly or even having stuff thrown at them while they’re trying to do their job. I know there are some police officers who are not doing what they should be or aren’t the nicest people, but I think that most of them are doing their job excellently. Their job is not easy, dealing with all us knuckleheads out there who seem bent on breaking the law. They’re the guys you love to hate – that is, until you have an emergency and then they’re your best friend. I am as guilty as the next guy when it comes to the love/hate relationship with the police.

It wasn’t always that way. When I was much younger there was a police officer who was really a great guy, whom I’ll call Officer B. We often sat on a stone wall on the corner of a main road and a side street that a couple of my friends lived on. Officer B was a motorcycle cop, at least in the warm weather months, and he would often stop and talk with us when we were just hanging out. He got to know us over time and would talk to us like he was our big brother, just talking about sports, girls and life in general. Never once did I feel like he was watching us, though I did feel that he was watching out for us.

Even as we got older and moved into our teen years, Officer B would still stop and say hello and hang out with us for a few minutes. Maybe neighborhood policing was the new fad in police work back then, but I don’t remember any other cops doing that kind of thing. I think that part of the reason my friends and I liked him was because he was just a guy who, instead of trying to lecture us, took the time to talk to us – like our baseball coach or the guy who owned the Sunoco station where we always got our candy, soda and STP stickers. I guess they didn’t treat us like kids.

Now fast forward about three or four years. My best friend Tony, another guy and I were riding around town in Tony’s car on a typical Friday night when we got pulled over by the police. At the time, we weren’t doing anything wrong, just cruising around looking for something to do (translated: looking for some girls to hang out with) when the blue lights were flashing behind us. So we pulled over and were ordered out of the car – with guns pointed at us. I knew right then something wasn’t right, so we did what we were told to do. Apparently, a blue car was seen leaving the industrial park at a high rate of speed after a break in and Tony’s car was light blue. They searched the car and found nothing but some tools – a screwdriver, some wrenches and the tire iron for the car.

There was one young police officer who, maybe to win some points with his superiors, took these common tools for working on your car as proof that we were the guys who had done the break in. He even told us those were “hard evidence” against us. We told him we hadn’t been anywhere near the industrial park and there was nothing found in the car that would have been stolen from there, yet this guy was having none of it. As far as he was concerned, we were guilty. Just when I thought we were all going to jail, Officer B showed up out of nowhere. He looked over the situation and asked “Barney Fife” what was going on. When told of the crimes we supposedly committed, Officer B told him to let us go, that he knew us and we wouldn’t have done it.

Officer B came over to me and we talked for a few minutes while the crowd that had gathered dispersed. I thanked him for sticking up for us, but he just laughed and told me he knew we couldn’t have been the guys. One, because he’d known me for years and two, because they were looking for a dark blue car, not a light blue car. As quickly as the situation occurred, it was over, all because of a cop who took the time to get to know some kids over the years. Obviously, Officer B hadn’t heard about my foray into the elementary school when I was younger. Otherwise, things may have turned out differently that night.

One Man's Trash Is Still Trash

I am appalled at the amount of trash I see laying around in the streets, on the sides of the roads, in parking lots, well, basically everywhere. It seems that just about every place I go I’m greeted by somebody’s carelessly discarded fast food bag, candy wrapper, soda can, losing scratch tickets, etc. I won’t even mention all the knuckleheads that flip cigarette butts out the window like the whole earth is their personal ash tray (oh, I guess I just did). 

A few weeks back, there was a local clean up for Earth Day and there was trash bag after trash bag on the side of the road filled with a year’s worth of refuse. There were also car tires, old television sets and radios, old chairs and worn out rugs. I even saw a car bumper on one street. I couldn’t believe all that trash had been picked up. The sad part about it is two days after it was all picked up and looking nice, some ignoramus dumped a small pile of junk in one of the spots that had just been cleaned. Seriously, the cleaned up area lasted all of two days. I guess they thought that it was someone else’s responsibility to clean up their mess.

What is wrong with people these days? I used to live on a semi-main road and almost every Saturday and Sunday morning I would have to clean up my front yard or the street in front of my house because there were Wendy’s, Taco Bell and Dunkin' Donuts bags, and quite a few times the remnants of a six pack from your favorite brewery (Drink Responsibly? Yeah, right). It wasn’t just my yard either. It was all up and down the street. There was a time we had put a non-working stove out front to be picked up by the local trash company and I noticed a car had stopped in front of it. I watched as they took off the dials for the burners, which I really didn’t care about since it was going to the dump. So the guy puts the dials in his car, takes out an empty wine bottle and a couple empty beer bottles, puts them on the old stove, jumps back in his car and starts to take off. I was ticked off big time and went tearing out of the house to try and get the license plate number or throw one of the empties through their back window, neither of which happened since they were too far away. I just couldn’t believe what I had just seen.

I’ve mentioned many times that we didn’t have much materially growing up, but one thing my parents taught us was to respect other people’s property. That meant that you didn’t throw your trash out the window of a car onto someone else’s lawn or in the street. Here’s a concept that doesn’t seem to be being taught anymore: bring your fast food trash home with you and put it in the trash when you get home or put it in the trash barrels that all fast food restaurants have outside their buildings after you eat and before you leave the parking lot. I know that’s a lot of work for some people and it appears they believe that it is below them to take care of trash, but it is their responsibility to clean up after themselves. Maybe it comes down to a lack of respect, I don’t know.

I don’t want to sound like an old man, but back in my day we didn’t throw trash out the car window. Littering was just not accepted. If my parents ever found out that I was throwing trash out the car window, I would not have had a car to drive for months. They just wouldn’t have stood for such stupidity and laziness. Plus, they probably would have made me go clean up my mess if it was still there just to teach me a lesson. My friends didn’t do it either, at least not that I can remember. This much I know: there wasn’t anywhere near as much trash in the street or in people’s yards.

So do your fast food takeout, have a soda or a bottle of water while you’re driving, even try your luck on a scratch ticket. Just have a little respect for the rest of us and don’t carelessly discard your trash out the car window.