I was at Wellspring Disc Golf Course (in Burlington) the other day, and they had a glass display case just filled with cigarette butts. The caption read that cigarette butts are the number one most frequent incidents of litter in the world. While some people think they are relatively harmless, they are not just paper (particularly the filters) and can take years to biodegrade, wash into water supplies, be eaten by wildlife, etc.
I don't wish an afterlife in the nether world for anyone, but I wish there was some special room of torment for people who litter. Ideally it would involve the suspension of privileges or suspension of access to the place they litter. I mention this because, quite frankly, many disc golfers are particularly bad about this and other forms of litter.
I played a monthly today at OT Sloan in Sanford, and excepting Redan (in Atlanta, Georgia) OT Sloan tends to be the filthiest course I play on. What makes this maddening is that the park has several trash receptacles, including ones by holes 1 (&18) 7, (&8), and 10 (&12). I typically find discarded Gatorade, pop, and beer bottles, often no more than 100 feet from a trash can. Today, typically, the course was strewn with Taco Bell wrappers, Wal-Mart bags, and other trash. Again, I don't (in an ideal world) want to see the people who strew this trash publicly caned, but I wouldn't mind some sort of karmic penalty box where they get a flat tire the next time they are driving to the course.
But even that's not what prompted my rant, since (sadly) it is so typical and pervasie that I'm now used to it. Nah, I'm frosted today because of a special kind of litter. For two days in a row now, I've returned from disc golfing on a public course to find gum on the sole of my shoes. Big old gooey, sticky, half melted (in 90 degree North Carolina heat) just strewn on the floor to find my shoe. Now one can rationalize that with some trash (like bottles) that perhaps it falls out of one's bag while one isn't looking (though I doubt that on the empties), but it's hard to buy that one can't carry the gum (in one's mouth) another hole or two until a trash can or wrap it up in a napkin if (heaven knows why) one can no longer stand having it in one's mouth.
Again, I don't wish hell on anyone.
Maybe just purgatory...an amount proportionate to the time I have to spend scraping and brushing and washing the crap you spit out of your mouth off my shoe because you can't be bothered to show a little common decency.
And by you, I mean you gum spitter, butt flickerer, beer can discarderer. You know who you are.
And you wonder why your sport is not more popular and doesn't catch on with the fans.
3 comments:
People who spit gum on the sidewalk are definitely on my personal list of those who deserve a special room in purgatory, along with those who text-message or talk on mobile phones in theaters during the show. But fortunately, I do not run the universe.
There's nothing worse than a frosted biscuit...unless it's frosted with buttercreme. Is it buttercreme? Tell me it's buttercreme. Tell me!
I'm guessing it's not buttercreme, so then one must conclude that you are now in posession of Icy Biscuits which do no body any good. And that's bad.
It happens on non-disc golf courses, too...although not so much the gum.
Beer cans, cigar and cigarette butts, paper, napkins, discarded tees and empty sleeves of golf balls.
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