Renee the anarchist

What do you get when you mix a police officer and a teacher? A very legalistic daughter.
I have worked very hard my entire life to follow the letter of the law and avoid disappointing figures of authority. But my accumulating years have emboldened me, and I have become a bit of a rogue. One 'rule' I have begun to blatantly disregard is (prepare yourself...) "Do not walk on the grass". This was a hard one to break, not only because I am always afraid somone will yell at me (In my all-too-well socialized mind, there is always some authority figure hiding behind every corner in my life, waiting to jump out and humiliate me with flashing lights or a banging gavel or a raised voice), but also because my entire life I felt as though tramping across grass simply to get somewhere more quickly was (1) lazy, (2) a criminal act against the living grass, and (3) disrespectful to those who tended the lawns. For a long time, this rule fit nicely in my understanding of right and moral conduct. In college, I learned that large numbers of people walking on the ground would push down the soil and make it more difficult for things to grow. But what I have come to realize is - it's grass! And barely! This stuff with which the college campus near my house is adorned chokes out life. And the chemicals and gasoline that go into its maitenance is appaling. I agree that the land beneath it is valuable. If I had any hope that the college would utilize it more responsibly, I would respect their pathways and rules. I have no hope.

Another rule that has come to mean very little to me is, "No littering". It is strange that my increasing environmentalism leads me to disagree with a rule like this. I am a child of the 80's, and raised in a flood of Earth Day, Save the Rainforest, and Captain Planet. What I did not understand about society's embracing of environmentalism was that it is mostly aestetic. Why not litter? We create so much trash in the united states, but it is invisible to most of us! Why not clutter our lives with reality until we are moved to create true change?