On our prosperous Boulder Mall, where all the men are handsome, all the women are good-looking, and all the mendicants take Venmo, there are 44 separate signs that declare, No Pets. Such signs do not inhibit our infatuated dog owners, who can't bring themselves to believe that the injunction applies to their particular o so lovable canine. They cannot fathom that not every mall-walker is in love with their Bowser. As a result, the No Pets law is widely and defiantly flouted.
There's a second mall rule: no amplified music. Acoustic guitars, string quartets, bluegrass bands, accordionists, and singers are all allowed and encouraged. But every once in a while, some itinerant assembles an appallingly large apparatus on our otherwise peaceful Mall and produces sounds that can be heard for half a mile. Rude, ear-shattering noises.
Canines and amplifiers are everyday commonplace violations. But yesterday, walking on the mall, we observed a remarkable and unprecedented novelty. Along comes a nondescript scruffy guy walking an oversized nondescript dog, and lo and behold, onto the beast is strapped a boombox. Honest to Pete, I'm not making this up! The attached mechanism is a powerful one and it generates an extremely loud noise. Unidentifiable sounds, possibly though not certainly some sort of music.
A woofer with a woofer, so to speak.
The man and his faithful friend proceed shamelessly along the mall, bass notes vibrating the shop windows and oscillating my pancreas.
I was floored, frankly. One dog, one amplifier; two concurrent violations.
And then I watched in amazement as the big ol' dog dropped a big ol' deuce. A double deuce, actually. Two long brown glistening, smoking turds. Lurking right there on the bricks, preparing to ambush the pretty white shoes of the next three-year-old princess-in-a-pink-tutu to come tripping by.
In our town, it's the inviolable custom that every dog owner carries a plastic bag and politely disposes of his pet's droppings. Not this guy. He just kept on walking, pretending that he didn't know what was going on at the end of his leash -- which was, as a I have said, 1) a pooch, 2) an attached amplifier, and 3) pooch poop. A jackpot -- a perfect trifecta.
Do I have a theory to account for such contemptible misbehavior? Well, I've been thinking and mulling and contemplating, and I'm aware of the talk of the breakdown of civil society, but all I can come up with is this: some people are royal jerks.
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