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Making Choices, Making By-Laws

By Deborah Elaine Barrie

My husband Paul has a hard time making decisions. He is always concerned that there might be a better choice if he hangs in there a little longer. I am still amazed he showed up at our wedding. He was late.

His ability to not commit to a choice has been an endless supply of amusement among my children and myself. We never ask him what he wants for supper if we plan on eating in the next four hours. If we plan on dining out we usually pick a restaurant and then share the news with him. If someone is foolish enough to say to him "Where would you like to go", a loud groaning will come from everyone else and we will head to the kitchen to start cooking because we ain't going to arrive anywhere before they close.

Once when we were in a mall we stopped at a frozen yogurt booth to get a cone. The server named all the choices and we began to laugh, she had no idea what she had just done. A half hour later this same woman offered him a choice of cones. The rest of us were finished our treats when the owner walked up to Paul and said , "make your choice or you are getting nothing, we are closing."

Life is like that, if don't choose someone else will do it for you.

Today I made a choice. I have taken the first step to seeing a pesticide bylaw addressed in my small town.

I have been very busy working on the cca issue and have mostly ignored the continuing assaults on our health from pesticide drift.

I have asked the local business to inform me time and time again when they will be spraying in my neighborhood. They forget as often as they remember and I pay for that with heart spasms and other problems. Yesterday, they forgot again. I was leaving my home unaware they were next door spraying.

Last night I felt sick and then the spasms began. Today my heart is skipping beats and is in spasm. I called them and they were unwilling to discuss the situation with me but gave me another promise to call. Those promises haven't carried a lot of weight.

I have written a letter to the town clerk to be offered to council. In a phone call to her I was advised that looking into a pesticide bylaw had been suggested by one councilor but that the idea had not been adopted yet.

I am tired of not being able to enjoy my own property. I am tired of not being able to use my clothesline because I don't want chemicals on my clothes. I am tired of no family barbecues, no nights under the stars in my garden with my husband and friends. I am tired of not awakening to the smell and sounds of dawn coming in my window. I am tired of my choices being stolen from me and being poisoned without consent.

Today I made a choice to take my rights back. Whether I win or not, time will tell, but if I do not try others will make my choices for me and so far that hasn't been going so well.