Leaf blowers eat their young!

A few years ago, I was sitting in my office in Vancouver, quietly doing my work. A co-worker was there too – let’s call her “AntiLeaf” (not her real name). AntiLeaf is a quiet sort, not one to really rock the boat, yell or scream. She was very level-headed, and perhaps a bit repressed. Conservative. Yes, gentle reader, she was one of the “quiet types”.

Among other things, she did not like leaf-blowers. I mean, no one really likes them, but AntiLeaf took her dislike of leaf-blowers to the extreme. Every time someone in the neighbourhood of the office used a leaf-blower, she would get visibly agitated and start shooting dirty looks at the windows. Grr Grr Grr. It was autumn, and this went on for a few weeks. Grr.

One day. The day I will always remember (and now so will you). I was typing away at my computer. She was doing something at hers. Over the din of the leaf-blower (and the relative concentration-quiet of the office) AntiLeaf scraped her chair on the floor, stood up, and emphatically stated “That’s IT!”.

AntiLeaf strode over to the windows, opened one, climbed up on the windowledge, and yelled “!!”

When I asked her about the odd turn of phrase, she said it was all she could think of at the time. Fair enough.

This story can never happen again – at least in Vancouver.

Mad props out to AntiLeaf, wherever you are.

Her name was Sonya Zeitler. We didn’t really get along all that well, but provided each other with pretty good entertainment for a few months.