SPAGHETTI ON THE SPLASH PAD?

One morning, when I was checking Firestone Park for trash and glass, I found something crazy on the splash pad - spaghetti noodles!  Somebody got into the food pantry at the church across street, and scattered a box of spaghetti on the splash pad!

What a mess!  There were too many to pick up with the trash grabber.  So I had to sweep them up, just like I sweep up glass.

Had I not cleaned them up, the water would have come on, and they would have softened and eventually disappeared, I suppose.  But what a nasty mess!  Would you want your kids running around on slippery spaghetti noodles?

 

I picked up a whole bucket full.

This was one of those days when I wondered why I was picking up trash.  Surely I had better things to do.  And then I thought, if I didn't do it, who would?  Who would get down on their hands and knees and pick up spaghetti noodles knowing that the person who threw them on the splash pad was probably hiding in the bushes watching?

A dog might come by and eat some of it.  And possibly get sick.  Employees from the Community Center might come out and try to clean it up, but once the spaghetti got wet from the sprinkler, it probably would have pasted itself to the cement.

Thinking that I could make this problem go away sounded good to me.  When the park opened, and the sprinklers came to life, nobody would ever know.  

That sounded really good to me.