I’m not the most up-to-date person with current events, so I have been trying to make sure I read one of our city’s two free papers during my morning commute. Usually I rush through the paper, taking note of any contests or happenings in my fair city before I turn on my mp3 player or read my latest self help book (All the Good Ones Aren’t Taken, for the curious). Today, I found myself commenting (internally, don’t worry) on nearly every story my eyes hit:

Spitzer steps down – His wife is looking at him like she wants to strangle him. I would be far too mad to stand beside him in a show of…solidarity? It would be too soon for me.

‘Smartie parties’ leave adults dumbfounded – Gosh, I don’t understand the children of today: grabbing your parents’ prescription meds, bringing them to a party, dumping them into a bowl with the drugs your friends have pilfered, then passing the bowl around and choosing a pill, not knowing what the pill is? And adding alcohol to the mix? Has it gotten to that point? Really?

I’ve never understood people who have to try everything, or who want to experience everything, good or bad for themselves. Is it really necessary, for example to drink to the point of alcohol poisoning just to experience it? Or try crack cocaine? I just don’t get it. And why aren’t kids afraid of dying at all? I know I’m at the other end of the risk taking spectrum (and that’s boring) but someone explain why some people aren’t scared of these really bad potential endings!

It reminds me of something I heard a few months back about kids playing the strangulation game where they strangle each other? themselves? for a high. Good grief! Are highs really worth almost dying (and in some cases actually dying) for?

City gives up on ploughing snow – We have had so much snow that we’re very close to breaking the record for highest recorded snowfall in the city. So close that I say we should go for it (you know, in case we have any control over how much more snow we will—or won’t—get). Anyhow, a neighbouring city has decided that widening the streets (many of which have been reduced to one lane) is a higher priority than clearing sidewalks so they are going to push all the snow off the streets onto the sidewalks (except for main streets and near schools) and hope that the spring thaw comes quickly.

All I can do is encourage anyone who will have to walk on the streets to walk facing the traffic so that, like my dad said, you can “dive into a snowbank” if you see a car barreling toward you. The alternative—being hit from behind and catapulting into a snowbank, never to be seen until the snow thaws—is not pretty.

Filed under: Mundane by jummy