We’ve had quite a week online. There’s been so much to get upset by! We start with middle school students, who, when walking home from school, horse around and push their friends in front of cars.
This turns into the obligatory discussion of how, when we were young, we would never do anything so foolish. We would walk home from school, but somehow the topography and climate of the island were different back then. There were more hills, more snow, and just more ambient misery. And the hills were not stationary. The whole island would pull an MC Escher while we were in school, so that wherever we walked to, the roads were always uphill.
We’re also mad at drivers. One driver careened out in front of someone on an otherwise empty road. The poster says, ““Red SUV I hope you have a shitty day, like explosive diarrhea shitty day.”
We give our enthusiastic support for this curse, which means we’re all in a coven now.
And now that we’re in a coven, we’ve been invited to join an orgy. It’s not as cool as it sounds, though. Here’s the post: “It has been reported to me that there is a victim bashing orgy going on on another local site about gun “control”. Anyone care to join in here?”
Thus begins an oblique conversation where we talk around whatever we’re trying to talk about. Using my skills of deduction, I gather that this is about the recent car break-in in which a burglar stole a gun, and the sheriff’s office’s response was to tell people not to keep guns in their cars.
Now, no one should break into a car, so the burglar is the bad guy in this scenario. That said, a loaded gun is a dangerous thing, and we live in a world where we know cars get broken into, so taking care to lock up your gun somewhere proper might not be a bad idea. As one isalnder put it, “A locked and unattended vehicle is not a gun safe.”
The whole thread follows a theme we have on here often, which is that people get mad when they see other people getting mad about things they think they shouldn’t be mad about.
I propose a compromise. Let’s be mad about both things.
We’re also upset about how people get upset that drivers go under 50 on the North End. An islander points out that not everyone is from the island, and if you enter the highway from Cederhurst, there’s no speed limit sign. They suggest we get more speed limit signs and flashing lights at pedestrian crossings.
We also have other, more colorful, proposals to fix the problem:
- Monthly races to determine the fastest drivers. Whoever wins can automatically board the boat first.
- Spike strips.
- People who like to speed move somewhere with freeways.
As a side note, we beg pedestrians to wear reflective clothes. Or at the very least they could evolve eyeshine like cats have.
Finally, Someone is giving away boxes of Tupperware lids. Not the Tupperware. Just the lids. They were for an art project that never materialized. I, too, have many mismatched lids with no bases, but I never sought them out. They just mysteriously appear in my house. They have accumulated and now take up the better part of a drawer. If you want to get rid of your lids, and no one is willing to take them, consider leaving them near one of the island vortexes. They will be someone else’s problem soon.
Author: Anna Shomsky
I'm a former teacher and a data engineer living on Vashon Island. My writing has appeared in Five on the Fifth, Women on Writing and on the Post-Culture Podcast. I wrote and produced the radio show Whispers of Vashon for 101.9 KVSH. I’ve had short stories published in the anthologies Island Stories and Chicken Scratchings, as well as through the Open Space Literary Project.
