Hi Everyone,
It only takes a few people to ruin it for everyone. This is what I mean.
When the human traffic on the sidewalks is congested, I will walk up an alley. As I escaped the crowds I watched a car park. The driver got out and a security guard asked him to move his car. From all the times I have walked up that alley I have only heard the security guard speak to 3 maybe 4 people. This driver was one of them. Then again there normally isn’t a lot going on. That day was different.
There was a delivery truck, 2 vans with plumbing logos on them, a UPS van and 2 other plain vans parked. Instead of the driver moving his car as the security guard asked, the driver told him, “I’ll be back in 6 minutes man. Don’t worry.” In my head, I said, “Seriously?”
Naturally I had to stay to see just how long this guy was going to be. It was more than 6 minutes. Try 11 minutes. In the first 7 minutes that the driver was away, the 2 plumbers had to haul their equipment farther, the UPS driver had to wait for the delivery truck to leave, other vehicles had to back up about a hundred feet because that was better than waiting for everyone to figure out how to move their vehicles. The next day the same driver parked his car in the same spot, give or take a couple of feet. And he did that the day after too. On the fourth day, there was a huge obstacle in everyone’s way and no one is parking there ever again.
Another day I stopped to talk to the building manager about the dirty needles and blue bands that drug users use as tourniquets I found scattered down the way . He has some interesting stories.
One day as he was checking the property because some one was going to move into the building he works at, he saw someone who he said, “They had all their stuff out and looked like they were going to shoot up. So I told them, politely, that they would have to leave. And do you know what they said to me? They asked me, ‘Can you give me 5 minutes?’ I looked at them, walked inside, waited a minute or two, came back out and they were gone. The moving truck showed up a little after that. I couldn’t believe it.”
I said, “Yea, because everyone who moves into an expensive building wants to see someone shooting up a few feet from the moving truck that’s got all their stuff in. And if that is what they can expect to see people doing during the day, they’re probably wondering what people are doing here at night.”
This story bothers me the most for three reasons. The first is that not everyone is comfortable with people doing or abusing drugs. I know that I am not. The second is that people who use and abuse drugs do so just about anywhere and at any time of the day. If you don’t believe me, walk down a street or through a park. The third reason, and the most disturbing, is that there is a Safe Injection Site less than 200 metres from where that person and many other people shoot up. I am serious. It is a bit hard to stop people from overdosing on illegal drugs that may be contaminated when they won’t walk less than 2 minutes to a Safe Injection Site.
I could go on, yet I won’t. I have already gone over the time I allocated to writing this blog by 4 minutes and I still need to proof-read it.
Thank you for reading, A. Rebel’s Rant! ;D
PS for anyone who is interested, I went over my “writing time” by 8 minutes.
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