Think About Littering If You Love Murder

Also, put a smile to those behind 

Back in 2013 when Singa drew its own resignation letter, jokes exploded on the Internet like a fine ticket- the horror, dismay and a gradual realization that we were a bucket case for graciousness.

Today, with a spike of up to 19, 000 notices for littering, a double from that same year Singa called quits, it seemed that we have alas reassured ourselves a quality for debauchery. And if that’s not a trait to brag about, why do we still persist?

I knew from the get-go that littering is wrong. Even before the cases of UFOs (Unidentified Falling Objects), sighted from the windows of our neighbours, left the rest of us puzzling over what can, or cannot, be considered “killer litter”.  That the act itself too, cannot be singularly defined either- cases of an entire household burned to the ground by obstructing “litter”- where a collection of your neighbour’s possessions strewn in the corridors stood in the way between you crawling out unscathed, and folding in completely into flames. 

Litter kills, I know that, but it’s a careless killer who leaves behind evidence… Its idiocy has roused flat, tall jokes about a certain occupant who gets 4-weeks of jail time for flinging a bottle of perfume through his window grilles, not a fear of a killer the public would usually worry themselves over. And it’s no surprise for such an inconspicuous act to arouse absolutely no degree of suspicion. After all, litter has no common sense. Litter, as charmless as it’s indifferent, has become collateral damage.

Today, I am part of that generation of indifference reflected most recently in a Facebook post by our prime minister. This time litter has saved on the killing, but disfigured an entire pasture of our Gardens by the Bay. The evidence of Laneway (a Facebook photo of our yearly music festival held outdoors) became his concern, and they sounded like warning shots fired at environmental agencies to tighten the viceroy grip on this continual case. Those shots were heard: every 19, 000 of them.

You see, litter has little mystique (if not none) over what’s feared as a crime; it strikes between apathy and a nagging conscience of how conservative the country has been about the way it’s to be sown forever evergreen. So if I could suggest an emphatic approach toward murder by litter, it should be one that revises from graciousness to actually saying our proper graces. Something like the next time the ticketing man comes to “fine” you, the rest of us could go, “Bless you!”