I hate it when...

.... people don't do the little things to make this world a better place.

I have grown up in a family who pays extra attention to what is going on around them. How many times from birth to today have I heard "be aware of your surroundings," probably millions, bordering on trillions.

That is my dad. I used to believe that only people in the loop of wildlife officers understood why the small things are important to the big picture, but nowadays I use him as a face value explanation.

Today, a girl didn't push her chair in on her way out of class. I admit that I was more angered by this than I probably needed to be, but it would have been courteous to do. Something that used to be known as 'common courtesy,' when did anyone decide to drop the common?

When I pushed the chair in on my way past, the professor chuckled ..... read it again, chuckled... at me and said something along the lines of 'well aren't you orderly?' Thank you, authority figure, for making a mockery of common courtesy.

It is at times like these when I look people straight in the face and say my father is a Colorado Division of Wildlife officer. You would be utterly amazed at the shift in attitude people get at that point - because, for whatever reason, it all makes sense to them then. To be honest with you, even I could not tell you why it works.

Here is my mom,

I have found that telling people my mother works in a greenhouse. has the same effect as telling people my dad's job. Weird, huh? Or not so weird. I think that if anyone looked at any person and rattled off any job in response to a situation like that, it would result in the exact same understanding.

You tell me why, because I don't get it. I just know it works, and I know that these are the people I got the habit from so they are who I'm citing by practicing them.

Today, got me thinking, though, about who all had a hand in teaching me the value of pushing in a chair, not spooking a herd of elk, rinsing out a dirty cup, not shoving napkins into cups at restaurants.

I grew up in Salida.

Where  a lot of people that you run into everyday tend toward this naturally.

And since being old enough to have some say in it, the people that I've been surrounded by have the exact same tendency.

People who understand that you have a choice to make.

You can leave things - people, places, situations - better than you find them, and make an improvement (however small) on this world.

or

You can leave things without having done anything to make them better for the next person who comes along, and you will have played a small part in its decay.

So that's one of my goals in this life, to make the first choice over and over and over yet again, because if we all do this, think about the good that could come of it.