THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 23, 1996 TAG: 9608210500
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 02 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: IDA KAY'S JORDAN
SOURCE: IDA KAY JORDAN
LENGTH: 76 lines
No matter what people say about recycling being a waste of time, most of us still believe that saving aluminum cans is a good thing to do.
At my house, we also believe in recycling newspapers, glass and plastic. Mainly, I got sold on that when I was covering some discussions of landfill costs in North Carolina.
Even if they say recycling doesn't do much to save national resources, the notion of recycling still is good because it may keep a lot of the stuff out of landfills. And landfills are what run up the cost of trash and garbage collection.
So, on our back porch, closed in by a lattice, we have collections of stuff for recycling.
A week or so ago, a big bag of aluminum cans disappeared. I feel certain that some young kids saw them and immediately thought of the quarters they could get back from the tin can machine over on London Boulevard.
My main hope is that they used the money for a Coke with a capital C and a chocolate candy bar, not for other substances that kids should steer clear of.
What really bothers me is that some kid would feel free to go onto our back porch and take the cans. That's trespassing and stealing.
Whoever took those cans didn't have to steal them. Anybody who had asked us would have been told to take them. But many kids today don't have any conscience about simply taking what they want. I have a real problem with that even if I gladly would have given them the cans.
Same thing goes for a fig bush in the yard near the porch. We came home the other day and somebody had pulled off all the nearly ripe figs, apparently with the notion of eating them. However, they weren't really ready, as the culprit apparently discovered. There were half eaten and busted figs were all over the ground.
Again, somebody only had to ask and we would have said eat the ripe ones. We even would have shown somebody which ones were edible. Instead, somebody vandalized the tree and stole the figs.
Admittedly, it has been a long time since I was a little girl, so things are bound to have changed. In many cases, they have changed for the better.
At the same time, some changes are not for the better.
Most people over 50 were taught NEVER to go into someone else's yard and certainly not onto someone's porch if they were not at home. People didn't have to erect fences and lock gates to keep children out. Children had the fear of God and the promise of a spanking drilled into them. And they simply did not go on other people's property unless invited.
I remember cutting through a neighbor's yard to go to the little grocery store a few blocks away when I was a kid. The neighbor actually had suggested I should do that when she asked me where I was going. My mother just happened to be standing on our porch, able to see me but not the neighbor.
When I returned with the loaf of bread she wanted, the first thing out of her mouth was a scolding for cutting through the neighbor's yard. When I explained that I had been invited, she relented but warned me not to make a habit of it.
To this day, my 92-year-old mother is not real happy to see kids cutting across her yard.
I also remember when I was a tot, maybe 4 years old, and pulled all the green tomatoes in our own garden. I explained that I was helping my dad, which may have softened the scolding I got, but didn't eliminate it. The point was that I should have asked before I acted. If I had picked a neighbor's green tomatoes, no explanation would have headed off the spanking I would have gotten.
Apparently, nobody ever tells kids today that they are trespassing and stealing when they cut through other people's yards and when they do things like steal tin cans or pull green figs. Yet, that is exactly what they are doing.
Fussing over empty cans and green figs sounds like silly complaints - especially if we would be willing to give them to the kids anyway.
But it's the principle at stake.
If kids are allowed to get by with little things, they grow up thinking they can get by with bigger things as adults. They think that just because they want it, they can have it - an attitude that fosters all sorts of other bad habits.
It's not as big a leap as it seems from stealing empty cans and green figs to more serious crimes that beset this city and this nation. by CNB