Weekly Behavior Awards

With deference to our friends on the West Coast, it appears we're off to a slow start this morning. So let's wrap these awards up this week with just two nominations - one for Best Behavior and one for Bum of the Week.

For Best, we have from our faithful friend Bronchitikat in the British countryside this story: "Well, for Commendation there's the guy who, last Monday afternoon, noticed I was struggling with my bicycle on the railway footbridge steps & offered to help. As you've noticed, not all 'young people' are yobs!"

And for Bum here's my tale: Actually this didn't happen in the past seven days, but I'd forgotten to mention it last week so I had to tell you about it today. So the wife and I were Einstein Bro's getting a bagel and what not - you may recall that's where we saw a woman in a full sweat suit on a day it was over 90 degrees outside - when a couple came in behind us with their small child. I know it was hot, and that conventional wisdom says fewer clothes are better. But this kid (I'm guessing he was about 3-years-old) was in raggedy drawers (underwear, not shorts), a grimy, stained t-shirt - and I don't mean sweat stains; these were food stains or some other biological material, and no shoes. The bottoms of his feet were black as soot. His parents in the meantime wore clothes...from top to bottom. And they seemed to have no problem with their kid rolling around the filth of the floor. Nor did they seem to notice or care when he dropped his banana at least once, picked it up and resumed eating. Kids will be kids, and kids can attract dirt like magnets, I know. But c'mon? Not one of you can tell me it's cool to come out of the house with your kid looking like he's been raised by wolves. I'm not saying they were starving the kid or abusing him. He looked chill and fed, but there's public casual look and private casual look. Whatever happened to cleaning yourself and/or your kids up before taking them out? Anyway, I offer these parents up as Bums of the Week.

Oh, and I also nominate for Bum my neighbor across the alley who sneakingly left a stack of his old fence planks, full of exposed nails, on the swale behind my home and not behind his own place. Technically most of the planks appear to be sitting on my next door neighbor's side. But some are on my side. So if a kid had been playing in the alley and stepped on one of those things I could be liable. And if the city decided to issue a ticket for that stuff being placed there improperly or at the wrong time of the month? Yep, I could get the ticket. He's an older guy, and I might have felt a little more sympathy, except when I confronted him he played dumb and acted like he didn't know he should have stacked this stuff behind his own house instead of mine and my nextdoor neighbor's. Yeah, and I just fell off the back of the yam wagon.

Finally, a special Coolness Award goes to Bronchitikat for introducing us - or me, at least - to a new slang. I've made my way through crumbum, knucklehead, pinhead, chowderhead, and all manner of other heads, to describe triflin' people. But Bronchitikat taught us "yobs" today. Thank you B, and I plan on using yobs in a new posting just as soon as I see a yob in action. And if things go as usual that won't take too long today.