Littering With Violence

Easy image search, this

Shared ride fare in Trenton, NJ with the pick up occurring on a non-prosperous street. My new front seat passenger is a young woman who, upon discovering that there is an empty small water bottle in her presence, just opens up her window and throws it out into the street.

With violence, and without a first or second thought.

Now, in this moment (and it happened four weeks ago, so it's clearly stuck with me), the following thoughts:

> Wow, that's a terrible person

> Hmm, she just did that in front of me and two other passengers, and clearly doesn't care what we think of her

> Only I seem to have noticed, because everyone else in the car is praying to their phone

Which led me to a longer and deeper rabbit hole of...

> Maybe when you live in a place like this, you just give up, and I should just be grateful that I'm not here

> I will never have the self-confidence of this person, who isn't bound by a constant self-censoring need to seek the approval of others

> Perhaps she's acting out from some other trauma or issue in her life, like maybe she's the only person in her house who cleans, or she's going to a job where she has to clean all day and hates it

> Maybe I should stop the car and get out and pick that up to eventually put it in recycling

> But to do that would delay my passengers, imperil my rating, and maybe not even be the right thing to do for the environment, since my car is burning gasoline and I've heard recently that since China isn't taking US recycling, it all might be single stream anyway

> And maybe it's my fault for offering the water bottles in the first place, since I'm clearly contributing to the problem by voting with my dollars to have more plastic...

And, finally, this.

> I overthink things. She's a terrible person. Drive.

And, thanks to the three stars and you're out rule of passenger rankings, one I will not see again.

Except, of course, while I'm overthinking my life experiences...