This past week, Q-line asked: What negative thing happened to you in 2007 that you would like to leave in the past?
Here are your responses: “THE BIGGEST NEGATIVE THING ABOUT 2007 for me is being a pedestrian in Santa Monica. I have tripped and fallen over the cracked and misaligned sidewalks and even once on Santa Monica and Lincoln boulevards in the middle of the badly paved road. I have also been nearly run over on the sidewalk many times by inconsiderate and speedy bicyclists, and on occasion some speedy skateboarders and dawdling homeless with packed shopping carts and other conveyances. I would like to have a little more pleasant experience on the sidewalks of Santa Monica. The police should cite these misdemeanors before they kill, maim or injure someone who is trying to walk on the sidewalks of this crowded city. I don’t walk much any more because of this annoyance and frightening experiences.”
“THE MOST NEGATIVE THING THAT happened to me this year just happened last week. I drove my car into a wall and fractured and broke my sternum and put me in tremendous pain and the car I don’t have anymore. I will not drive any-more. I am an old man in my 80s and no way can I drive. The pain is too excruciating. In no way will I drive again.”
“WELL, EXCEPT FOR MY TRIPS TO Disneyland, Disney World, Euro Disney and the Simpsons movie, I’d say the year has pretty much been a waste of time and you can forget the whole thing.”
“ALTHOUGH IT WAS NOT A NEGATIVE experience, still I will leave behind that at the beginning of 2007 I began my international search for Elvis Presley. After my locating Elvis, who is alive and well living in reclusive seclusion, I asked Elvis to honor me by taking a picture of us together to verify our meeting. Elvis said he would take a photograph with me if I would assure him that I ain’t nothing but a hound dog and promised not to step on his blue suede shoes and find him a woman that would love him tender and old enough that he would not end up doing the jailhouse rock. I agreed, but seemingly out of nowhere came a man the size of Kong who I was certain could spank Hulk Hogan before pinning him to the mat. He stated that I better take off to blue Hawaii now or I would be dancing the hula with two out-of-place kneecaps. I then bid Elvis aloha and headed back to Santa Monica. As you can read, 2007 did not have an effect on me, on me, on me.”
“THE QUESTION THIS WEEK FOR ME, personally, should have been what negative thing didn’t happen to me in 2007. Come on 2008, baby needs new shoes, but for me, it should be baby needs a new year. Praise God 2007 is over and done. Thank you.”
“THE NEGATIVE THING THAT HAPPENED to me in 2007 was the realization that the current City Council is anti-environmental given their plan to destroy the trees on Second and Fourth street and they don’t want to listen to the community. I think it is time, if they continue this way, to vote them out of office and possibly consider a recall campaign.”
“I LOST MY 94-YEAR- OLD FATH ER in 2007. Most of his friends say he certainly got his money’s worth. The negative angst is because of my perceived loss, but being dimwitted I can’t see his fantastic gain. Whether you believe in one life or 100,000, where he’s at has to be infinitely better relatively time wise than the history of brutality and stupidity of this plane of existence. As I sometimes view the light from the torch of the Statue of Liberty, no matter how thin it seems, it still lights the path to divine thought than any country in the history of our world. Happy new year.”
“IN 2007 I LOST MY JOB, MY SOURCE of income and in the first time in 20 years I have to be on unemployment, and I am. But that’s not the worst thing that’s happened. Like a phoenix I will rise any way. The worst thing is having the mobility taken away from me by selfish people who ride their bikes on sidewalks very fast, especially at night. I don’t own a car and I walk everywhere. I also run and I’ve had more than one frightening experience of being practically knocked down and run over by a streaming line of bikers making their way to the Friday night Critical Mass bike ride. Also random incidents of people with no horns, nothing to alert me to their presence, almost knocking me down on the sidewalk. The sad and scary thing is once someone has knocked you down you have no recourse. There’s no license plate, very minimal ways to get retribution from that person. Please don’t ride your bikes on the sidewalk. Please don’t. Health is the most important thing. Without health we have nothing. That’s worse then being unemployed.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on January 5, 2008. Read the original PDF.