Shutterbugsailer Loc: Staten Island NY (AKA Cincinnati by the Sea)

On a recent photo walk in Staten Island's Fort Wadsworth park, I noticed a young couple peering at the objective lens of one of the pedestal mounted binoculars overlooking New York Harbor. When they left, I took a look myself and saw that someone, probably a teenage boy, had scratched the "F" word into the protective glass cover of the lens. No doubt, the culprit was hoping that any viewer looking to scan the NYC skyline would see the world's favorite expletive instead. While clearly a destructive act, I am not ashamed to say that it amused me and made me feel warm and fuzzy inside. As a long time photography hobbyist and lifelong recreation sailor, familiar with optical instruments, I chuckled at the offender's lake of familiarity with binoculars. For one thing, there is no way that any binocular would be able to focus on anything that close to the objective lens. In the unlikely event that it did, the viewer would see the mirror image. On a deeper level, it was strangely comforting to see that boys will always be boys. In my younger days, I did similar pranks. Later on, I emailed pictures of the damage to my sister and we shared a few laughs. She reminded me of the day more than six decades ago when I learned to swear. Like many five year olds, my dirty word vocabulary consisted of "sissy" and "doodie". One day my sister who was two years older than me came home with a shit eating grin. She announced that it was time to ditch those words and replace them with "shit" and "'fuck". I asked her what they meant and she replied that she didn't know anything other than that they were real bad. Knowing they were bad, but not knowing why added to their mystique, and for the rest of the day, we paraded around the house putting either or both of those words in every sentence. For whatever its worth, I would not have found defacing someone's home, personal property, house of worship, or headstone the least bit amusing, like I did in this instance