Bullet with butterfly wings.

A couple of weeks ago I was shopping. I pulled into the parking lot of the store and, while I was crossing the road to the front door, an SUV pulled up with two 20-something women in it. The one on the passenger side jumped out and an empty plastic water bottle spilled out with her.

She turned and looked down at it as she slammed the door, and watched it bounce off her foot and under the car. She walked around the front of the car as I proceeded to walk around the back.

As luck would have it, the water bottle had enough momentum to roll completely under the car as I approached the driver's door, so I picked it up and tapped on the window. The woman rolled her window down and I said "Excuse me, I think your friend dropped this," and handed the bottle to her. She looked confused. I smirked and walked away.

The lesson is that littering is disgusting. The people who casually litter and complain about larger crime problems should look at themselves as the beginning of the issue, not the victim. A lack of civic pride is the flap of the butterfly's wings that, years later, turns a prospering neighborhood into the ghetto, and erodes people's sense of responsibility.

Pick up your litter.