Happy cows come from California. Skinny Cows come from Genesis 41:3

I don’t think that many people share my way of thinking about some things. For example, I don’t think that I should pick up after others, nor should they pick up after me. We should each be responsible for fixing or cleaning up our own mess. Of course, we are free to ask others for help, and they are free to ask us. And it’s only polite to offer that help (when asked) within reason. I suspect that most people would say that we SHOULD go around and tidy up or whatever after others. Poppycock. You know how I mentioned that on Sunday I came back to Central Catholic and found the gate closed and locked? That was undoubtedly some do-gooder cleaning up after me. But what he really did is make things worse.

In 2002, I shared a house with Letitia and Becky. At the time, I was working a job that was more or less swing shift, so I tended to get home well after the girls had gone to bed. One night, I arrived home to find a package of Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches had been left out on the table and had mostly melted. It was a mess on the table-cloth and had begun dripping onto the floor. Now some people would think that they needed to clean this mess up. Not me. As I said, I didn’t create the mess and I didn’t think I was responsible for cleaning it up. However, if I left it alone, it would continue to melt and make a bigger mess. So I placed the whole thing in a plastic grocery bag and left it where I found it, only now it wouldn’t make more of a mess. This struck the girls as ludicrous and I’ve received a fair ration of crap about it since, but it made perfect sense to me.

So I ask you, what do you think of my solution? Should I have cleaned up their mess? Should I have thrown the whole thing away without cleaning? Should I have ignored it (and maintained plausible deniability) and just gone to bed?

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