West Coast Observations

It's stating the obvious to say that California is quite different from Massachusetts. But it's driven home when you experience it firsthand.

For one thing, I noticed a distinct lack of litter on the streets of Santa Cruz. I don't know if this is because the city is especially vigilant about picking it up, or the citizens don't litter in the first place, or both, but a look around any street in any part of this area is enough to leave me embarrassed. Littering is something I have always had difficulty comprehending. Boston and its surrounding cities deserve a share of the blame (I often see trash cans full to overflowing because they don't get emptied frequently enough, then a wind comes along and strews the trash all over), but people are just as much at fault.

Over the course of several days of driving around, I also noticed that no one honked their horn at us. Not once. No one was in danger of having an aneurysm because we didn't accelerate away from a stoplight or make a left turn quickly enough. And it's not because they are slow drivers; they drive just as fast on the highways as we do here. They're just a lot more relaxed about the journey. Around here people treat driving as if getting to any destination, no matter how trivial, is a matter of life and death.

But the most amusing contrast came, of all places, at my nephew's birthday party. As I listened to the parents of the other guests talk to and about their children, I noticed that almost all of them were named things that I'd never heard used as names before. Here are some examples (I made sure to write these down during the party because I didn't want to forget any of them):

• Sienna
• Justice
• Trinity
• Zephyr
• Denali
• Rider
  

Clearly there's a lot of fruit-flavored crack being passed around up in those hills. I was relieved to hear that one girl's name was Brianna; that one's practically a townie classic. (Maybe her parents relocated from Saugus?)

But here's the thing about these names: half of them are current or former names of cars or trucks. If you're going to make the extra effort to saddle your kid with a weird name, shouldn't it signify something other than a vehicle? Unless, like the kid named Dodge on My Name Is Earl, it's in honor of where s/he was conceived.