To The Reader’s Forum:

One might think COVID would have made people more conscious of health and hygiene and maybe even a little more considerate in their public behavior. Apparently not. Yesterday, right in front of me, going in a local supermarket, also known as a food store, an old woman plunked her long haired dog right in the basket part of the grocery cart. I looked at once for the sanitizing sheets the store provided for COVID because I am in the habit of using that section of the cart for produce some of which I eat raw.

I went right to a manager and asked if that wasn’t against store policy or state health rules. “We aren’t allowed to say anything,” he sheepishly told me. Allowed by whom, I wonder and why not? What is there about being crass, dirty, or thoughtless that gives you privileged status?

I’m disgusted by fools who spit in public, on sidewalks, in parking lots. We all have to walk this back into our cars and homes. Toddlers fall and grovel in it then stick their hands in their mouths. We all carry the sputum on our shoes everywhere. At one time it was outlawed as an anti tuberculosis measure. It is among the countless barbarisms I’ve seen make a comeback in my life time.

Right in front of me in the checkout line was a man with his child standing in the cart. I spoke up. The man was defensive, not apologetic. How do you defend something like that?

I was in a fast food restaurant once when a woman sat her diapered baby right on the counter. “That’s against state health regulations,” I told her. She felt ill used. I don’t care what kind of filth people want in their private lives, but why with sanitation as with everything else, do we all have to lived by the risks and rules of the bottom layer?

Norman P. Carlson

Busti