It started out as a good idea. I saw on the news this morning that the Attorney General was hosting a shredder day at a Baltimore high school. Although the event was free, donations could be made for the benefit of Junior Achievement. "Great" I thought, "I love JA. It will be worth a donation to get rid of that big box of paper in my office".
For the past several years, I've had some accumulated paper that came from cleaning out old files or from tossing into the mix junk mail for credit cards and other offers. I started hand shredding it but soon realized it would take a month of Sundays to just make a dent. I figured sooner or later I'd make one of those community shredding days.
Lloyd and I filled two large trash bags and took off to securely rid ourselves of old bills, pay stubs, ancient tax returns, medical information, and all manner of stuff that the dumpster divers would love to get their mitts on.
And we were joined by hundreds of our closest friends. I haven't seen this much traffic since The Yankees were at Camden Yards, since we drove through the Holland Tunnel, since Baltrimoreans freaked out in a freak storm on the beltway during rush hour.
You know who was there? Stupid and stupider. The response was much larger than expected and as a result traffic was snarled and people did crazy things. We had multiple sightings of cars, not just driving, but flying up the wrong lane and barely missing oncoming traffic. We saw one car attempt a 3 point turn at a very busy intersection, another one back out on to busy falls road. We had a woman drive up around everyone and cut everyone off. Oh, there were smiley faces and nice people and just normal well-behaved citizens but they were not so easily noticeable among the rude, arrogant horn-beeping idiots who almost ruined the day.
One has to wonder why The State didn't plan a little better with radios and trained traffic cops but the volunteers were doing their best and we were extremely grateful for them.
I was almost embarrassed when we dragged the two large bags out of the house but when I saw some of the other cars, I realized I needn't have worried. There were two cars that came together and I was shocked at the number of boxes pulled from their trunks, backseats, even front seats and floors. Unbelievable! I sure hope that came form a small office and not from a home.
One thing that was very good was the privacy factor. The people manning the trucks did a good job of limiting the number of cars that could dump at once. This made is almost impossible for dumpster divers to commit a stealth attack.
So that stuff is gone but I still have more to clean out. Hopefully next time we will hear about it ahead of time and get out earlier in the day instead of sitting in a parking lot for over an hour taking our lives in our hands with crazy drivers.
Ah, life was so much easier in Mayberry USA. Aunt Bee never worried about identity theft.
For the past several years, I've had some accumulated paper that came from cleaning out old files or from tossing into the mix junk mail for credit cards and other offers. I started hand shredding it but soon realized it would take a month of Sundays to just make a dent. I figured sooner or later I'd make one of those community shredding days.
Lloyd and I filled two large trash bags and took off to securely rid ourselves of old bills, pay stubs, ancient tax returns, medical information, and all manner of stuff that the dumpster divers would love to get their mitts on.
And we were joined by hundreds of our closest friends. I haven't seen this much traffic since The Yankees were at Camden Yards, since we drove through the Holland Tunnel, since Baltrimoreans freaked out in a freak storm on the beltway during rush hour.
You know who was there? Stupid and stupider. The response was much larger than expected and as a result traffic was snarled and people did crazy things. We had multiple sightings of cars, not just driving, but flying up the wrong lane and barely missing oncoming traffic. We saw one car attempt a 3 point turn at a very busy intersection, another one back out on to busy falls road. We had a woman drive up around everyone and cut everyone off. Oh, there were smiley faces and nice people and just normal well-behaved citizens but they were not so easily noticeable among the rude, arrogant horn-beeping idiots who almost ruined the day.
One has to wonder why The State didn't plan a little better with radios and trained traffic cops but the volunteers were doing their best and we were extremely grateful for them.
I was almost embarrassed when we dragged the two large bags out of the house but when I saw some of the other cars, I realized I needn't have worried. There were two cars that came together and I was shocked at the number of boxes pulled from their trunks, backseats, even front seats and floors. Unbelievable! I sure hope that came form a small office and not from a home.
One thing that was very good was the privacy factor. The people manning the trucks did a good job of limiting the number of cars that could dump at once. This made is almost impossible for dumpster divers to commit a stealth attack.
So that stuff is gone but I still have more to clean out. Hopefully next time we will hear about it ahead of time and get out earlier in the day instead of sitting in a parking lot for over an hour taking our lives in our hands with crazy drivers.
