I’m madder than a giraffe with a stiff neck over the ingrates in Bensonhurst who had the nerve to complain when a group of more than 100 youngsters put away their iPods and iPhones and iDon’tKnowWhatElse for a few hours on a hot August day and helped clean up the streets around Seth Low Park.
Look, you all know that I’ve been screeching about our filthy streets since the day my blessed mother scolded me for dropping the wrapper from my five-cent Hershey bar on Mulberry Street. She taught me a valuable lesson that day, and I’d be lying to you if I told you that I didn’t shed a tear when that Indian did in that famous commercial from the ’70s.
So you can understand why it drives me nuts to hear people complain when kids are out there doing what I’ve been doing since I was a rambunctious 3-year-old: picking up the trash that others left behind.
But, believe it or not, that’s exactly what happened. Let me break it down for you.
It was a blistering hot day on Aug. 9, when I hopped on trusty Tornado and headed out to the streets of the Hurst to help my good friend and Assemblyman Bill Colton get some kids together to clean up the mess that was all around the park between Avenue P and 22nd Avenue — where conditions would most certainly make the namesake of that park — one of the greatest mayors of the City of Brooklyn — turnover in his grave.
When I got there, there was Colton, looking sharp in his long pants, collared shirt and tie, leading the charge, using shovels and brooms provided by New York’s Strongest (that’s the garbagemen, you know), shoveling his way to McDonald Avenue.
I also saw the organizer of the event, 17-year-old Priscilla Consolo, the young community leader who will be a senior in Midwood HS this fall who is also volunteering at Colton’s office, out on the street sweeping empty soda bottles picking up disgusting cigarette butts from the sidewalks.
Priscilla and the other 101 volunteers, all from local youth organizations, including Our Lady of Grace Church’s Teen Group, United Chinese Association of Brooklyn, Boy Scouts of America, Comptroller John Liu’s Youth Action Team, and Division Nine High School Key Clubs, including Midwood HS and Brooklyn Technical High School, labored diligently from the late morning and into the early afternoon under that torrid summer sun.
But here’s what made me so doggone mad. As the volunteers worked, there were some people who had the chutzpa to complain that they weren’t pleased with the job they were doing. “Hey, you missed a spot,” I heard one degenerate say as the kids swept their way down Stillwell Avenue. The nerve of the guy!
Look, you know as well as I do that these kids would have much rather been playing “Monopoly” or “Pay Day” or “Sorry” or whatever it is the kids do today, but instead, they volunteered for the greater good.
So I felt like I was going to explode when I heard these people who dared to complain, criticize, and even yell at the volunteers! These whiners grumbled about everything from the volunteers making too much noise, to asking why they were bothering with the clean-up to begin with! One grumbler even wanted the volunteers to remove the grass from the cracks in the sidewalk! The nerve of those ingrates!
It’s beyond me why these moronic malcontent community misfits would condemn the kids who gave their time and energy to help make their neighborhood a better place, unless they were the pigs that made the filthy mess in the first place!
Instead, they should be chastising those who would throw garbage on the ground instead of walking an extra few feet to the nearest trash can! People must be constantly reminded that, as my blessed mother always told me — polluting the environment is plain out wrong!
Because this is not only our planet, this is our neighborhood, the place where we work, we shop, and we sleep — and we each should be doing our part to help keep it clean! And not only do we have to, but we should want to!
Now’s the point in the column where I thank people for a job well done.
My thanks to Priscilla getting the clean up done, and to all the kids who came out to help clean up the mess. Don’t let those complaining scumchops get you down!
You made me — and my mom! — proud!
Screech at you next week!
