Why, of late, are people throwing rocks from overhead bridges at cars? A few have got killed that way. The government is now spending tens of millions putting metal mesh panelling several metres high and curving inwards to try prevent people hurling objects from bridges to cars being driven below them. In New South Wales at least, some of the mesh panels have native flowers impressed on them. I suppose in the hope that beautification of material, even as bland as mesh wire on overhead bridges, might deter rock throwers.

 There are now bridges over highways that are completely enmeshed with an all-round cage structure excluding the possibility of those Neanderthal creatures throwing anything at all. Where does this rock throwing urge come from and why? Some, with a bend to psycho babble, might argue it is men’s innate desire to go back to the cave. … Others might conclude that those that get up in the morning wanting to engage in rock throwing at cars would have to be diagnosed as being mentally unstable. With Australia’s poor record on mental health, it would not be at all surprising this to be the case. It mightn’t just be those rock throwers that are walking around in need of help.  Our jails often perform a duty belonging to mental health. In fact, many agree that our high rate of incarceration is due to those unfortunate enough to suffer from mental health problems ending up in jail. Those correctional institutions are lumbered with the extra role of a de-facto mental health institution as well as catering for genuine law breakers

The other habit for which no answer has popped up yet is the compulsion to scratch windows with sharp objects.   I presume many people must catch trains in the morning, not just with sandwiches in their briefcases, but also with Stanley knife, perhaps battery operated tools and routers, to put and engrave their weird messages on the windows. There is hardly a train that hasn’t had their windows scratched.  Even the top windows are given this treatment.  It means the vandal travellers are standing up on seats to do their work, or some might take stepladders as well. It is not just a single scratch in a moment of madness or a fleeting post relationship or failed marital flash-back, no, a continuous scratching backwards and forwards over and over again. The letter Z seems to dominate. Is it the literate joy of operators for the letter Z or is there some subliminal message that only the initiated understand? Again, analyst might well argue that this desire to leave messages has always been with us from the pre-historic scratchers of the Palaeolithic cave art of the South of France or the Egyptian Hieroglyphics’ of more recent times. Our own indigenous rock paintings are proof of people wishing to put feelings onto surfaces and make engravings or paintings.

The problem is that those trains will hardly be viewed in thousands of year’s time and one can only surmise, if no sense can be made of the messages now, how will it in anno 10510?

Almost all trains, even brand new ones, are damaged by those carving scratchers. It means there must be thousands of travellers engaged in this strange ritualistic social behaviour. Or, are we all close to being at the edge of suffering mental disorders? We pretend to be ‘normal’ and civilised but how close are we in being totally out of control? They certainly are out of control on our overhead bridges and suburban trains!

 We have seen the rioting and looting by people in countries suffering from enormous natural calamities such as earth quakes and tsunamis. In a relatively wealthy country such as Chile we saw TV footage of people fighting over cans of soft-drinks, carrying away radios and TV’s, items of clothing. Police and Army with guns at the ready were called in to restore order. In other words, people engaged in behaviour they would otherwise never engage in.  It is far easier to understand those people letting emotions get the better of them. Thousands of people lost their loved ones. Children, parents, friends, neighbours, all those gone in a flash. Hundreds of thousands are without home or shelter. Lives totally disrupted.

Here in the perennial stableness of Australia we do not have those natural calamities, oh well, the drought excluding, or a call back on some new priapism suffering cars, the cancellation of a cricket or footie match!

 I doubt though that drought stricken farmers have taken to hurling rocks or scratching train windows. We complain about public transport but at the same time thousands who use the public facility also damage them. Who does all that scratching and why?

 Is there despite this stableness and calm an undercurrent of terrible frustrations only a nano moment away from people close to the edge? Do they see hurling rocks or damaging properties as a way of getting contentedness or a fulfilling of lives otherwise lacking?  What goes on in those minds that open their Stanley knife and start scratching or slashing the windows and seats? Perhaps we ought to be tolerant and accept a behaviour that releases some stresses which would otherwise express itself in random dog strangling, bouts of faeces throwing, or worse, in homicide.

It is hard to put a reason for vandalising. I sometimes wonder if drugs might have something to do with behaviour that make people do certain things.  Are they having meth crystals melting away in their cavities somewhere?  Look at those sprayers on suburban fences and private property. Spray cans are now kept behind lock and key in shops and proof of age is required. Some of those spray paint pictures are nice, especially on endless boring and forgotten walls adjacent to railway lines.

Anyway, next time you are in the train it could well be you who can’t resist the urge to start scratching ZZDIOt Zr^) Za##mbod on the window.

Apropos; do women scratch windows or hurl rocks?