Breaking the rules

I was at my parents’ house yesterday afternoon and spent ages sorting out the internet connection on their computer and then changing their gas and electricity suppliers. My parents have never done anything about their utilities suppliers and so have probably been paying over the odds for years, so it applies to my skinflint nature to find them a far cheaper deal. Next month, my mum’s car insurance…

We had a Chinese take away yesterday evening and mum and I went out to collect it. There’s a dispersal order in place in the local high street which means that yobbish youths are not allowed to congregate there and the police can move them on if they do. However, I guess these things are only as good as those who enforce them, so there were a number of teenagers (and some pre-teens) hanging about and being a bit intimidating. A couple came into the Chinese and the bloke was fuming at the state of today’s youth and how he couldn’t believe that nothing was being done to stop them from hanging about in the local area. Then he suddenly dashed out of the door after a group of girls and berated them for dropping a cigarette packet on the ground. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they couldn’t care less and just treated him with utter disdain and he just ended up throwing the cigarette packet in the bin himself. Then he walked back into the take away and seethed.

The thing is that whilst I think it’s good to try and “maintain standards” and it winds me up when people drop litter or leave rubbish on the tube, running after people in the street is quite a dangerous thing to do. That chap was such a ball of anger at the “decline in society” though the most likely outcome for him at some point is for him to have a heart attack at some point.

For me though, I am reasonably law abiding citizen, and have a healthy respect (or is it fear?) for authority. I can think of a couple of instances from my youth where I didn’t follow the rules and they taught m that the path of least resistance is just to do the right thing. My littering days were brought to an abrupt end when I must have been below the age of 10. In fact it was possibly the only time I had dropped litter. I dropped a smarties tube on the ground and the next thing I knew this old bloke was having a go at me and telling me to pick it up, which I did and that always stuck with me and I have never dropped litter since.

Something else you’re always told as a child is not to run out into the road. I can think of two instances where I ran into the road, the first time I nearly got knocked down by a speeding car. The second time I ran across the road to my house and this car was coming down the road. I made it to the other kerb at which point I realised it was my dad driving the car (it was a different car to normal) and he was not best pleased. Every time I try and break the rules I get caught. I can’t imagine where I get my risk averse nature from.