Only on Vashon- The Weekly Rundown 09/23/2022

A while back, there was a post about how to stop your outdoor cats from killing birds, and one suggestion was to give the cat a clown collar. I am happy to report that a cat was spotted in someone’s yard wearing one such collar! Look at that beautiful cat. It’s like a renaissance painting. 

We talk about what to wear when walking or biking. Surprisingly, no one recommends colorful collars. 

And then we argue about whose responsibility it is to keep people safe: drivers, cyclists, pedestrians, or bartenders as if the responsibility should fall solely to one party.  

When bikers are on the road, I just drive slowly until I feel it’s safe to pass. The worst thing is when the driver behind me honks, and the biker thinks it was me and looks at me like I’ve betrayed them, and I yell, “It wasn’t me! The car behind me honked!” but they can’t hear me because the windows are closed, so they think I’m yelling at them while gesticulating in a wild rage. 

 Please, if you are near me, don’t honk. Every time I hear a car horn I assume someone is mad at me personally and registering their complaint about not only my driving but my personality as a whole. 

One islander has a great way never to need to speed, “I almost never commit to exact plans, so, I’m hardly ever feeling like I’m in a hurry.”

Then we argue, is it entitled to walk on the road and not move over for cars? Or is it, in fact, the cars who feel entitled to take up the whole road and not slow down? 

Wait, hold up. The person accused of being entitled for calling pedestrians entitled clarifies what they meant. They didn’t mean the walking itself was entitled, just the people doing the walking.

An islander makes the following point. “It makes me wish there were actually safe ways to get around the island that wasn’t in a car or bus. Having a multi use path that connects town to the ferry docks would radically improve getting around without a car on the island.” I guess the solution to systemic problems isn’t finding the right place to assign blame but rather to fund and institute systemic changes. 

A group member wants to know if we can eliminate the anonymous posting feature because it’s “being used to spread malicious and false gossip that has very serious ramifications.” So, of course, we all reply with unsubstantiated rumors, like that the boats are all canceled due to an antivax protest or because someone was selling bad moon pies. (HA! They’re actually canceled because the Issaquah keeps having mechanical issues, which is perhaps more alarming than the gossip.) 

Some people think anonymous posts are a  great feature. This is a rants page after all, and we should all have the media literacy to know to take anything you read on social media with a grain of salt. Others think it’s cowardly to post anonymously. You should have the courage to stand boldly behind your conviction that the moon is haunted or that you want to eat coyotes.

We have the following anonymous poll: 

My only issue is that if you eat the coyote who ate your pet, aren’t you kinda, in an indirect sort of way, eating your pet? 

We are informed in the comments that coyotes aren’t very tasty, which explains the popularity of the third option. 

Someone found a lone sock along cove road, and they would like to reunite it with its owner. 

An islander has an explanation for how the sock got there and a simple method of returning it: 

“I believe this sock vanished from my dad’s clothes dryer last summer in Ohio. Who knew that the universe would choose to rematerialize it on Cove rd, Vashon. Please place it in your clothes drier with your next load. Hopefully, it will vanish and be transported back to me in a future load in our drier here on Maury. You may have to do this a few times until it vanishes. ” 

As proof, the commenter provides an image of the matching sock, which is not photoshopped.

The original poster, who initially takes their comment at face value because, as we’ve already established, everything on social media is irrefutably true, brought the sock to Cafe Luna for the owner to pick up. (I guess they don’t have a dryer with a portal in their house.) 

They eventually wise up to the charade, so it’s unknown whether the sock will be at Cafe Luna or not. But it is a very nice sock, so I hope it finds its match or, failing that, gets a chance to read Tom Robbins’ Skinny Legs and All. (This is a niche reference, but how often in life can you relate your experience to a story about a sock and a tin can that come alive and journey across the country?)