People are Strange

It's Saturday afternoon and I am riding along a usual route.  There is no traffic so I am admiring some of the gardens and landscaping of the houses along the way. This is a typical eastside neighbourhood street--about half the houses are 60's style smaller bungalows. The other half of the properties have houses that have replaced the older smaller ones with much larger and grandiose. All are landscaped within an inch of their lives.

As I am riding by, I see a woman who has obviously just spent the afternoon engaged in the maintenance of that most curious of bourgeois affectations--the lawn.  I can see that it has been freshly mown, I can smell the cut grass. As a typical suburban conformist, she stands and admires her fruitless work.

At the moment I am approaching, she notices a piece of paper that the wind has carried onto the edge of her lawn. She swiftly marches over to seize the offending candy bar wrapper. She bends down to pick it up and I expect her to turn towards the house, the garage where I see trash cans awaiting. However, she turns instead towards the street and deliberately, carefully, almost reverentially, places the flotsam into the street.

I see this happening in about three seconds it takes me to roll by. I am astounded.

I am left wondering how a person who obviously takes pride in yard maintenance and should have some awareness of the natural world would be so blithe. Is it a matter of a fortress/island mentality--once the offense is off my property it's of no more concern? Is it a matter of  the wrapper being another daily annoyance and affront to her own sense of  my/mine, some sort of material tresspass? Is it simple laziness and the path of least effort?

I'll never understand people.