By David F. Rooney
When I posted a copy of my column, How low can you go?, on the Stoke List in tandem with its publication in The Current I hoped it might — just might — prompt whoever stole the electric speed sign from Nichol Road to return it. Little did I suspect that it would actually prompt someone to boast about boosting the sign. But it did.
Here’s a post that appeared, to the condemnation of more than a few people on the Stoke List, shortly after I posted a copy of the column:
“I did the community a favour by borrowing the sign to get baked with. He`s a good smokin buddy and he sure can rip on a gravity bong. But if everyone goes an outrageous speed of 30kmh then no little children will (probably) get smushed. Theres always one deserving of the Darwin Award. And if we dont stop putting up “safety” measures like school zones so that children can walk by the car while walking to school, we will raise a generation of experience inept children. Like the gates above the stairs, how else would a child learn to stay away from stairs if theyve never fallen down a set? Same as they wont learn not to walk in the middle of the road, well cause its a school zone and pedestrians have the absolute right of way. If you get hit by a car I guarantee youll walk on the left side of the road from then on. Or like some skiers that have a bad case of cat track fever. How will they learn to ride in a straight line if a snowboarder doesnt smash into them because they cranked it sideways in the middle of a cat track? HAHAHAHAH. Sorry im ranting like everyone else here, just trying to fit in. Oh and as for the sign, its absolutely pointless, I actually speed up when I see it or any PAC parents trying to wave me to go slower, seriously get a life, and teach your children some spacial awareness. Me and the sign are off to a kegger and of course; To see how fast I can get my hand party going.”
Obviously, this person is a budding sociopath with no respect for the rights and property of others, let alone the safety of children.
I should have known better. As I mentioned to Arrow Heights Elementary School Principal Todd Hicks in an e-mail yesterday: “One of the most depressing things I have learned in life, Todd, is that for every man, woman or child who strives to be good, there are any number of others prepared to wreck things for the sheer enjoyment of it.”
Personally, I try to be optimistic about people, but that sense of optimism is sometimes very difficult to sustain.
