Talking trash to the ‘slugs’
By BLAST BY SETH BARNES
I live near Santa Monica High School. Since I moved last summer, I’ve found almost all the students who walk by my house at the beginning and end of the school day to be courteous, pleasant and respectful of the neighborhood. On street-sweeping mornings, there are a few wily young men who seem to have a special knack for poaching the last available parking spot from me as I drive wildly around the block, but perhaps I need to brush up my skills in this area — or move the godforsaken car the night before.
In any group, there are an unfortunate few whose actions reflect poorly on the rest. Especially when your group consists of hormonally charged individuals who can’t leave the house without scruffy sheepskin boots and a cellphone as thin as a communion wafer.
The fact is, Samohi has some legitimate litterslugs on their hands (I think the term “litterbug” is far too cutesy and car-toonish, so I’ve coined a more standoffish, confrontational term: “litterslug”). Littering isn’t a new issue, and compared to quality of education concerns, escalating dropout rates, school violence, and college/vocational readiness, a few spare pieces of trash chucked around the city by a few knuckleheads wouldn’t seem to raise many eyebrows.
Nonetheless, over the course of one day last week, I observed three different groups of students litter my street with soft drink cans, McDonald’s wrappers and uneaten food. In one instance, a kid backhanded a can across the street as if it were a Frisbee, an action so cavalier and crass that I half expected him to turn over the waste bin that stood no more than three feet away.
The fact that Generation Z (or whatever) is more than happy to fulfill health experts’ dire prophesies about obesity and poor nutrition is troubling. The fact they scatter their crap all over the city after doing so, is worse.
Most educational problems are complex: To tackle them we form blue ribbon committees, commission exhaustive status reports, and hold endless community meetings. There’s a lot of hand wringing and armchair psychoanalysis. Frankly, not a whole lot gets accomplished.
But the solution to this littering problem is simple. It’s a simple self-administered test that every Samohi student, and every litterslug, can take: “Yes” or “no,” are you a raging, self-absorbed jerk? If you toss garbage on the street like a mindless barbarian, the answer is “yes.” If you actually have the piece of mind, as most students and citizens undoubtedly do, to use the thousands of receptacles that the city and taxpayers have provided, the answer is “no.”
This test won’t solve the problem outright. But by self-identifying as litterslugs, perhaps this minority can stave off a disagreeable future. The Samohi students, of course, only represent a tiny sliver of the litterslug problem at large. In fact, there’s probably a fair chance that they take care of the environment and clean up after themselves in higher percentages than the rest of the population. I can’t reach the adult litterslugs, they’re too far gone. I’m singling out the offenders among our high school students because they can still be saved from going through life as unadulterated losers totally disconnected from the community.
Many studies have shown that adult lit-terslugs have significant problems finding gainful employment, and are far less likely to meet attractive members of the opposite sex. Think about it. You show up for a big job interview, toss a McChicken container across the room and hit the hiring manager in the eye. You meet a cute girl on the Internet and she agrees to go on a date. But as she’s walking up the steps to your house she slips on a rotting taco and stabs herself in the arm with a crushed Coke can.
Look, I’m not that removed from high school myself. And I’m certainly not going to stand here and claim that I’ve never littered. In my misguided youth, I probably masqueraded as a rebel litterslug from time to time. When you spend a few years in the real world, start paying for the roof over your head, and start paying taxes so the streets don’t resemble the after effects of a drunken mosh pit, it makes you care a little bit more about the community you live in. It makes you a little less selfish.
A wise, furry mammal with a cheap forest ranger hat once said, “Only you can prevent forest fires.” I think his words apply to the situation in front of us. Only you can prevent yourself from going through life as a vain, unfeeling, and ultimately unhappy litterslug. (Seth Barnes can be contacted at).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 16, 2006. Read the original PDF.