Part One: Literate and complimentary graffiti, clearly labeled.
On the street next to mine, last fall, I noticed that one of the local parents had gone up and down the block with chalk, and had carefully labeled various items by printing in neat letters on the sidewalk. Trees and shrubs and flowers were identified (though I questioned whether the ponderosa pine wasn’t actually a fir) – but this enterprising adult had also named a piece of petrified wood, and spelled out a house number, and noted a green gate and a purple door. Close to the end of the block, I noticed some graffiti. On the main pathway, someone had sprayed in glowy purple spray paint the words CHAD SUCKS DICK. On the little footpath next to the slab of sidewalk, at right angles to CHAD SUCKS DICK, was the word WELL.
CHAD SUCKS DICK WELL. I liked that. It seemed kindly complimentary to Chad, in addition to being grammatically correct. How easy it would have been to say CHAD SUCKS DICK GOOD and end up sounding ignorant and illiterate. Or just saying CHAD SUCKS DICK – a slur, and that’s all there is to it.
But what I liked almost as much was that in pink chalk, just below the DICK, that energetic and nonjudgmental modern mom or dad had simply written graffiti. Calling it exactly what it is.
I wish I had taken a picture of this… phenomenon in my neighbourhood, but I didn’t, and now both the graffiti and its label have disappeared. But the sense that I am living among goodhearted people remains.
