Leopold Wrobel Get 20 Weeks of Jail Time
Normally, I assign these sorts of oddball news stories to categories which carry names like “Another Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us,” or “Are You Freakin’ Kidding Me?” but the events and subsequent actions surrounding this particular saga say something about us, too, and that’s what can make stories like these worth exploring.
To start, a 51 year-old Wingerworth, England, man happened to be so annoying in his constant whistling of the theme song to the 60s TV series “The Addams Family,” local magistrates felt compelled to hit him over the head with a figurative tack hammer, in the form of a twenty-week jail sentence. It seems his unceasing twittering at the next door neighbors — especially when the couple spent any amount of time outside their home or within their yard — had previously caught the attention of the local bobbies, who’d seen to the issuance of what the British call an “antisocial behavior order” against the whistling wonderboy. Undeterred in the least by such a well-mannered and oh-so-polite request (you know, “stop the damme puckering and blowing, chap”), Leopold Wrobel kept at it day-and-night, night-and-day…whenever Michael and Kathleen Sharpe left their humble abode. Now, why he did such a thing is a question best answered by Dr. Phil or some other deep thinker. I think it’s just because he was, as the British might put it, “off his chump.”
Unfortunately, some folks are born to do these sorts of things like a Paris Hilton’s born to shop, drive drunk, get jailed, and then become even richer as the result of it all. There’s no accounting for cosmic unfairness, and this whistling whackjob is “unfairness” personified. He’s also a plague upon anyone unfortunate enough to become the recipient of his unwanted attentions, too, so — in the end — his obsession with warbling put him into the non-gilded cage he was destined to occupy sooner or later, in my opinion.
But what does it say about towns and cities who may have a few of those “antisocial behavior” ordinances? I don’t mean typical run-of-the-mill oddities, like the Alabama law prohibiting the altering of a horse’s teeth to make it appear younger than it is. I mean laws or injunctions enacted to regulate personal behaviors which may be innocuous enough, but which some person or another finds irritating or otherwise not within the bounds of good taste. We used to be taught to ignore the local village idiot who ran about town with his underwear on the outside of his pants. Eventually, he too would pass — or at least put his Underoos where they belonged — and the matter would just fade away. However, I’ve begun to detect a trend in our country in which tolerance for the unusual, in public and even in private (in many cases), is rapidly giving way to a “we know what’s best for everybody” mentality. Except in San Francisco, where public displays of sadomasochistic behaviors are applauded, but also where eating bacon within one’s own home or apartment may be grounds for chemical castration in the near future. Go figure.
Sadly, it appears as if we’ve begun to lose our tolerance (as opposed to acceptance, which is a different matter) for the little irritants in life. And, ultimately, I think we’ll all be the poorer for it.
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