Sweetheart, Please ...

In America we value individualism--non-conformity, self-expression--at least in theory.  So here in New York, things can get pretty noisy when 8 million people are clamoring to express themselves.

When I first arrived in the city I took great comfort in the anonymity that it offers.  Having come from a small town, I couldn't leave my house without running into someone I knew.  A simple (dreaded, anxiety-ridden) trip to Wal-Mart was like one of those nightmares where the most random of people from your past appear out of nowhere.  My fourth-grade teacher on the toilet-paper aisle, that girl i once made out with ringing me up at the check-out... The great thing about New York is that I can walk down the hallway of my own building and still not get recognized!  You can sit on a bustling street corner, barefoot, in the dead of winter, rattling a cup of change, and no one even knows you're there.

The Glamour of Anonymity wears thin pretty soon, and you realize it's rather nice to get noticed. It's gratifying to know you're being heard.  It validates you're very existence.

So that's why I was struck by Vicki from the tree store (?) who chose to leave a message for the litterbug outside her back gate.  What I love about her note (aside from the fact that it's posted, appropriately enough, in a tree) is its tone of Exasperated Militantism, speaking to every passerby's empathy when she says "I really have enough to do..."  We all have.  We're busy.  And exhausted.

But Sweetheart, please...take the time today make your voice heard.  Write a note.  High-five a stranger.  Yell at a taxi driver for honking his horn in gridlock.  Whether Vicki's litterbug will stop leaving boxes outside her gate remains to be seen.  But it really doesn't matter.  She said her piece: and I'll bet you she's having a damn good Tuesday because of it.

And, Reader, I wish you the same...