Stepping in it

On a recent bright cold day, as I was strolling the sidewalks of New York, I stepped in dog shit. There was a well-spaced trail of it, about the size (but not the color) of ping pong balls scattered along that particular block and other pedestrians were, as I had been, striding forward, unaware of the potential difficulty underfoot. In my case I spent the rest of the way home rubbing the bottom of my soiled shoe on small frozen patches of snow, hoping the brown stuff would somehow be scraped from amongst the tread.

And I thought how times change.

For, in the city's distant past, all New York pedestrians constantly watched the pavement for dog droppings. And there were a lot of them. On a dark rainy night, when you were in a hurry, you would often slide on them. Quite unintentionally, of course.

Then came the pooper-scooper law. And dog-owners and dog-walkers did what the signs said and cleaned up after their dogs.

Who would have thought such a law would be so suddenly and universally obeyed? Yet it was.
Our new mayor has expressed an interest in cracking down on jay walkers. And a good friend of mine is up in arms about what he believes to be a right of our pedestrians. (And there are no more aggressive pedestrians in the good old USA than New York City pedestrians.)

And, truth to tell, though jay walking is by no means a right, it is surely a set-in-stone custom.
I don't think he needs to worry about a crackdown on jay walkers. I'm reminded of the time Jack Paar announced on his version of the TONIGHT SHOW: "I want everybody who crossed against the light in Times Square during yesterday's rush hour to report to the studio." Big laugh from the (New York) audience, of course.

There is probably a mathematically provable formula to tell us that a law becomes unenforceable once X percentage of people insist on breaking it. Prohibition and marijuana-smoking are two good examples. Of course you can insist on enforcement, but that always leads to bad results: first, the law is disobeyed anyway and therefore all law is disrespected; second, it leads to unfair (because uneven) arrests and therefore more disrespect for all law; and, third, and finally, there spring up new economic opportunities for organized and disorganized crime -- though I confess I don't see how the Mafia can make a buck aiding and abetting jay walkers.

Some of our democratically-elected representatives will try to pass draconian penalties, of course, and some advertising agency will get the account and make Cross at the Green, Not In Between commercials again.

"What are you in for, Lefty?"

"Ten to twenty."

"Yeah? What for?"

"Tweening." (Prison slang for jay walking.)

"Hey, man, that's tough."

"Yeah. Thank God it was only my first offense."