Clueless parkers leave a pile of frustration in their wake

For every thing, there is a season. Right now, we happen to be in the season of leaves. The trees are finished with their leaves and, like a lush tossing away an empty beer can, they are ridding themselves of their now-useless photosynthesis machines.

In other words: It's time to rake.

Shirley Connuck of Falls Church wrote me hoping I would address an irritation that comes with this season: leaf-pile parkers. Leaf-pile parkers -- a.k.a. LPPs -- are people who park on your pile of leaves. (They are related to SPPs [snow-pile parkers] and HIJSTSPs [Hey!-I-just-shoveled-that- space!-parkers].)

"My kids and I spend a hundred hours or more raking and blowing leaves in the fall," Shirley wrote. When a thoughtless LPP comes and parks on top of them, "the leaf truck comes by and they can't get to them so they pass by all of my hard work. This happens a lot because I live across the street from a school. It happened today, as a matter of fact. Nothing aggravates me more in my life than having this happen repeatedly."

We should all have as aggravation-free a life as Shirley. But she has a point: "Not only is this inconsiderate to the homeowner, this can be dangerous for the person parking their car on top of the leaves. As I understand it, leaves can get pushed into the exhaust pipe and start a fire."

Wrote Shirley: "Could you please bring this to the public's attention in your column?"

Got that, public?

Hold on

Ken Stein is curious about something: the utter non-utility, in his opinion, of the grab bars in Metro cars.

"I have observed the new cars with all the different configurations of hand straps," he wrote. "Almost no one uses them."

Ken has made a study of this as he rides the Red Line to his jewelry store on F Street NW. He says people prefer the poles to the metal grab bars, and as for those vinyl loops that run down the middle of the train, they just hit people in the head. (Even shrimpy old me! I never feel so tall as when I'm ducking on the Metro.)

What do you think? The vinyl loops do give shorter people something to hold on to. The metal grab bars, however, seem to have a design flaw: They're spring-loaded, and in the resting position are just as high as the bars they're attached to. If you're tall enough to pull down the grab bar, you probably don't need it.

Me, I'm looking forward to the wool upholstery that Metro has been testing on a few cars. The soft, fuzzy fabric would mark a real change from the vinyl we're accustomed to. It'll be a while, though. The wool -- woven at a mill in England -- won't be installed until the next generation of railcars, the 7000 series, is introduced. And those cars, a Metro spokesman told me Tuesday, are still in the evaluation phase.

And a child shall lead them

Do not be surprised if a child hands you a bar of chocolate this Halloween. It's called "reverse trick-or-treating," and the idea is to deliver the message that your candy bar might contain cocoa harvested by child slave laborers. In August in Cote d'Ivoire, for example, police rescued 54 children as young as 11 from cocoa plantations.

Kinda puts you off your Butterfinger, huh?

This is the third year for the practice, which serves to call attention to labor abuses in the world's cocoa fields by having kids hand out fair-trade chocolate. Explained Todd Larsen of the group Green America: With fair trade, "you're not only getting great-tasting chocolate, you're also supporting farmers and making sure they're paid a living wage and supporting the communities in which they live."

But isn't this a perversion of all that is sacred -- that is, the notion that little costumed extortionists can fill their pillowcases with unhealthy edible loot merely by ringing your doorbell? What's next? Dogs and cats living together? Am I right to be worried that these fair trade, reverse trick-or-treating kids might not get their recommended annual allowance of Snickers and Reese's cups?

"The parents who buy the reverse trick-or-treat kits can give some to their kids, of course," Todd said. "Also, I don't think anyone's trying to stop anyone from having a good time on Halloween."

Worried about whether you might unknowingly buy child slave labor chocolate? This might be the year to give out raisins.