That is a perfect description of how I see them: "drifting through life doing stuff and never even considering how their actions will impact other people." My dear friend (cough), whom I refer to as "Victim" on my blog, once said to me in the context of Girl Scouts, "I never worry about those details [the details of running the troop], because I know it will all get done."

Yeah, passive tense. Not, "I never worry about that because I know YOU will do it." I don't know if she thought she was doing some of it without knowing, if she thought God In Heaven was doing it, or if she knew I was doing it, but didn't want to acknowledge her selfishness and irresponsibility.

It's funny (not funny to you, I'm sure) that you should post about honking, because I actually took a picture of a truck that was outside my neighbor's house (directly across the street from me) honking yesterday. I took the picture because I had never seen the truck before, and before they were honking outside my neighbor's house, they were honking outside the house up the street! What on earth could that have been? They got no response at either house. If you don't know where you're supposed to be, sitting in the street and honking is not going to solve the problem. I guess they thought they would just sit and honk until somebody came out. I was on the verge of calling the police (the police in our town have absolutely nothing to do, thankfully, and so I probably would've got several cruisers if I'd called), when they drove away.

Grrr. Drifters.

Ooops, sorry, on re-reading that I realize that anybody else who wasn't on my train of thought probably didn't follow along. I see Victim and the Drifting Honkers as the same breed -- they seem to think everything is anonymous. Their selfishness is anonymous, and the responsible people are anonymous, too. I don't actually understand what is going through their head, but I think it's a general lack of responsibility. They don't understand that the responsible people know exactly what they're doing, and exactly what the other people are NOT doing.

That sounds like a spot-on description of your friend Victim. To me it always seemed like a parsimony of thought. A person who thinks only as far as they need to, to get what they want. Honker wants to let her friend know that her ride is here. She knows that honking will do that, and therefore that's enough. Onky a person willing to invest more thought would think "I will also let everyone else know I'm here."

I wonder if Victim is like that, she sort of admits it, she doesn't trouble herself with anything beyond what she wants (i.e. including her daughter in an event of some sort)... who is going to supply the toilet paper or the whatever... well somebody will take care of that. From her perspective it's not her problem.

I'm not sure parsimony is the right word, because I don't think there's any active intent to economize solving a problem. It's more like laziness.

I used to have neighbors who had four different cars among the bunch of them, but were still getting picked up by other people who would show up early and honk and honk. In fact, I picked a bedroom in the back of the house for that reason... but I could still hear them honking. Just not as loudly.

I hope you're feeling better, Chuck. I didn't realize until today that you were sick.

I feel your pain bud... I wake up every morning to the bus accross the street running at a HIGH idle for like 15 minutes. (My neighbor is the bus driver). She goes and picks up her bus and then brings it back to her house and goes inside while it's warming up.

ugh.. There is not much I can do about it apparently... Although I haven't tried yet.

Jay

I'm going to recommend pneumonia to all my fellow bloggers. You get awoken out of sleep by a moron across the street. You stagger to the computer and grumpily peck out a screed and then crawl back to bed and go to sleep. Then a couple hours later when you wake up again, all your nice friends will have left comments for you to read. After which, you get to go back to bed! ;-)

Okay, just kidding, although resting up is nice in some ways, being stuck here is beginning to make me go bugshit. But unfortunately I run out of strength so rapidly, I can't get very far. :-/

LOL, Chuck, now I picture you "running bugshit" down the street, slowing down... getting drowsy... and falling peacefully to sleep in a heap on the sidewalk.

Heh... that is a funny image. Might as well put me in a blue plaid bathrobe with big bunny slippers on my feet and a thermometer in my mouth. :-)

It's too cold for you to sleep outside. Stay toasty!

Hey, I almost always comment on your posts, don't I? Even when you're not sick.

In any case, you should call the police and tell them you don't mind the drug dealers across the street so much, except that customers are making their pickups early in the morning and leaning on the horn.

>:-)

OK - that's not fair to the police. But it's fun to imagine.