Red Cups

“High school English Teacher Arrested for Trespass,” Mark muttered to me as I ran to catch up with him. He likes to try and scare me with possible headlines when I do something illegal, hoping to dissuade me. It never works. For someone who believes in anarchy, he is exceptionally law-abiding….And I wasn’t doing anything really bad—I was cleaning up the neighborhood.

Until l a few years ago, when the Idiot Fraternity moved into our neighborhood, I had a live and let live attitude towards college student drinking. It was part of the college experience. Just don’t drive, or have unprotected sex, and I didn’t really care. Then I was kept up for three weeks straight by their beer-pong games and bellowing and my frame of mind shifted to a Let Me Sleep or I’m Calling the Cops attitude. It was at this same time that I developed my antipathy towards the big red beer pong cups that were littering my neighborhood. After a fierce game, they were spread all over the yard and no one ever picked them up. The piles grew larger and larger, suggesting more and more drinking games. Trashy!

One day, while stomping to school at 7 AM, after calling the cops at 1 AM, I snapped. I Gathered up the cups and flung them at the offending house’s door. They spilled over the porch. Humpmph, I thought and moved to the next mess. Pick and toss, pick and toss…No cups were left in my path. On my way home, I noticed that they were all gone. And they didn’t come back the next weekend. The red cups were not new every week—they were leftovers from parties months before. I spread out; coming home from the movies, I pitched several beer boxes and bottles onto another porch, while Mark kept walking, pretending not to know me. A few days later, I pulled an offending couch out of the parking strip and back into the yard of the owner before calling the Code Enforcement officer. And it worked. With the exception of one very trashy house with a cracked foundation, the block was cleaner. Simple.

Now, I just have to trespass about once a month. Mark still mutters at me when I catch up with him, but he’s resigned. So, if you’re in a house with red cups in the yard and hear something hitting the porch, it’s just me, on a rampage once again. Throw them in the recycling on the way out….and call the GT. I’d love to be in the paper again.