By Graham von Carlowitz, Opinion Editor
I'm not an angry person.
I rarely grit my teeth and furrow a strained brow. I was once called the most mild-mannered child in a family of eight boys. One time, one of my brothers, in the spirit of slap-happy joking, swung his hand at my man-parts and struck gold, leading to me keeling over, filled with a torturously slow pain in my stomach. I know he hadn't meant to strike anything -- it was meant in jest -- so I simply resumed my upright position and called him a bastard in a pathetically squeaky voice. And that was that.
I was once awoken by the stench of upchuck, which happened to have been spilled out onto my stomach by another well-intentioned brother (he, uh, he thought I was a garbage can). In lieu of a fitting punishment, like removing my shirt and feeding it to my belligerently drunk brother, I stood up, walked him to the other, more real garbage can and traded my soiled shirt for a fresh one. The nightmare came to a close and I resumed my sleep, undisturbed. Evidently, my to threshold for bullshit is exceedingly high, I think.
To avoid scolding 80 percent of the American population (or thereabouts), I have put aside my anger for people who text and (try to) walk, as well as slow-walkers, but that one is a little less warranted.
However, the abysmal sight of litter blanketing the supposedly quaint, clean town of Oxford has me shaving enamel from the dwindling capsules of teeth that line the inside of my mouth. I'm pissed, seething.
It's only taken four weeks of roaming about off-campus for this perpetual nonsense to sink in. Those four weeks, of course, have served a catalytic function whereby my anger has simply boiled to a point where I am on fire inside and can no longer hold in my rage.
As shown by my brother's off night (and a plethora of other "off nights"), I understand what a drunk person is capable of -- and not capable of. And although finding a proper trash bin seems to be the most common challenge among the drunkards, I don't believe it's excuse enough to start tossing empty food containers into the bushes (or shrubs, I can't tell the difference) around town.
At the bare minimum, I would expect the stumbling drunks in question to hold on to these pieces of garbage until they made it back home. Ideally, the garbage cans littered throughout the sidewalks of Uptown would be used to, well, hold the garbage.
So please, spare me the pent-up rage. Please.
voncargh@miamioh.edu