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Tuesday, January 13, 2004 Something I've noticed here lately: an awful lot of people seem to be talking to themselves. People of all ages, the youngest spotted yesterday -- a slightly chunky schoolboy, 9 or 10 years old, mumbling his way down the sidewalk. Don't know if all this indicates something cultural (as in talking to oneself being more common, more accepted hereabouts than I'm accustomed to) or if there are simply many folks in need of help wandering about free. Or, at the very least, in need of mumbling partners. Something else: yesterday and last Friday, I found myself passing through the neighborhood plaza around 4 p.m., the space awash with kids just out of school. Most with daypacks (half with them slung over shoulders or backs, half pulling packs on wheels), probably from the same school, as most wore elements of a uniform. A wildly international collection, looking to be from 8 to 12 years old, with features and skin colors from all over the map, so that it felt a bit strange to hear them all speaking/yelling rapid-fire Spanish. The plaza rang with the noise these kids produced as they hung about in swirling groups, a soccer ball or two being kicked around, various individuals running through it all as if propelled by sheer joyous adrenaline. And something else I seem to have seen quite a bit recently: people dragging their dogs along, the dogs' little legs straight and stiff in an attempt to dig their feet into the concrete and slow the dragging down. The stiff-legged thing doesn't do much, in part because almost all the dogs are diminutive buggers, way smaller than their humans, so that even the least imposing, weediest dog-owner has no trouble pulling their little friend along behind them as if they were a furry, four-legged sack of, er, something that, er, needed to be dragged along behind. Them. (Pause to clear throat and collect what pitiful thoughts are on hand.) Just this morning, outside the gym -- right in front of the entrance, in fact -- a woman walked past, a white and brown wire-haired terrier on a leash trotting behind. The terrier stopped, adopted the universal we're-about-to-poop position, front legs planted solidly, back legs spread apart, bum hovering over the sidewalk right in front of the entranceway. The woman continued blithely along, the terrier maintaining position in a desperate attempt to take care of the body function at hand, front legs trying ineffectually to slow its progress away from the entranceway toward the street. The woman glanced back, saw what was happening, pulled the dog along even harder until it tumbled off the curb into the street, where the woman finally stopped, the dog gathered what crumbs of dignity it had left and did what needed to be done. I didn't hang about to see if this woman intended to clean up after her little friend, but the incident reminded me that the city of Madrid claims it's going to send out people with cameras to take pictures of folks who don't clean up after their dogs. Someone in the city administration has apparently been listening to the agonized cries of pedestrians who have stepped in dog poop -- there are days when walking around this neighborhood is like making one's nervous way through a mine field, Madrid being knee deep in teeny dogs -- and has come up with an interesting course of action: the old perp-photoshow ploy. In defense of Madrid and its dog owners, I have seen numerous instances in the last couple of months of humans picking up after the canine call to nature. Each and every time, I have thanked the individual doing the good and thoughtful deed (mentally if not out loud). I hope there won't be much need to embarrass miscreant dog owners. I'm writing about dog poop. Probably a sign I should call it a day, don't you think? ******************** For those who have never experienced the pleasure of Mimi Smartypants' writing, I have two words: haunted vibrators. rws 1:28 PM [+] |