Uncle Bubba and Junior went to a major league baseball game one recent Sunday afternoon. If one has never attended a ball game, there are wonderful intangibles that are missed in a TV experience; the smells, the sounds, the activities that surround the stadium, and the crowd experience. Any professional event tightly packs as many carcasses into as many seats as they can because seats is money. So you’ll be literally rubbing elbows with prefect strangers; and quite honestly, most of the time, it is a great and pleasant experience. It’s fun. After all, a ball game is a happy event and people come to enjoy themselves. This was the case for Uncle Bubba and Junior on a pleasant Sunday afternoon.
Here’s the thing that in Bubbie’s estimation has been lost on the current American society. We have an obligation to one another, which is a social contract to co-exist for the sake of the betterment of the society. This is the difference between a civilized and uncivilized society. In a civilized society, first and foremost we agree to cleanliness. This basic tenet undoubtedly unfolds into a multilayered discipline; branching into personal hygiene and cleanliness of the mind. Personal physical cleanliness is our best protection against disease. Just beyond bodily hygienic practices is keeping one’s personal space clean. So for example, if one attends a public event and partakes in concessions; then they should pick up all of the dropped food and empty wrappers, cups and bottles that they made manifest. I believe that is why there are rather large cylindrical binds known as trash receptacles located all about a stadium. For if you do not dispose of it--you know, the paper, plastic and residual food items covered with your saliva and DNA--them the other patrons have to walk through it to leave and someone else, most certainly an employee, must. That employee is someone’s mother, or father, or brother, or daughter. How much would you appreciate someone treating your relative in such a manner? Are employees and your neighbors beneath you? Are you improving the world around you; leaving it a better place than the way you found it? Yes, in Bubbie’s view, cleanliness is next to Godliness. Or as Bubbie would say, “Pick up your gal-darn trash you lazy SOB. Git-r-dun!”
