Park Bitch

I saw this in the Love You Hate You section of CityPaper the other day and had to share:

"Park Bitch

To the bitch who thinks he's running the park. Guess what asshole,you fuckin not dickhead. You waste 35 fuckin hours doing what. Don't you have a real god dam job? You look worse than a homeless person. Think your making a fucking difference cleaning up a worthless park? Your not. The neighborhood looks like shit with the crime and your worrying about a stupid park that still looks like shit. Your a fuckin idiot. Do some creative for the neighborhood than worry about cutting the grass. You do that once a month anyway,dumbass. By the way dickhead, I'll be litter 3 times a week. So you could have something to do,prick. Not unless your beating your fat wife."

I hope I managed to capture the illiteracy as accurately as CityPaper did. This is one of the many things anyone trying to make a difference in Philadelphia will come up against, apathy, but this isn't your usual simple lazy apathy. This is an apathetic person who was made to feel guilty by a neighbor, who then became angry and aggressively hurt their neighborhood to spite the person who made them think about things they didn't want to think about. Like the fact that they weren't helping the situation.

It's that whole, "Oh, you some kind of hero or something?" issue.

It's hard to understand people like this, but they are an extreme sect of a massive apathetic group. It's scary to read something like this if you're someone as idealistic as me that plans to attempt to make a difference. The idea that the people who live in poverty don't want my help, and might even hate me. It makes you question why you are trying.

Above all faced with such aggressive apathy I look at the supposed "park bitch." Somewhere out there in a crime ridden neighborhood some guy is cleaning a park that is being purposely trashed, again and again, because he believes that he can make things better. These people are out there, and they are doing all sorts of great work.

I wasn't trying to write a lot tonight, I just wanted to share that clip because it shows what anyone trying to make a difference in Philadelphia has to deal with, so I'll stop there for now. I think it's clear enough who the bitch is.