Sir: I was reading the signs along the sidewalk for the first time today. Now, I know that I ought to have read these signs every day, because they are placed there by our municipal government for our enlightenment and contain vital information of import to every citizen, but I have a life. But today I was stuck waiting for someone who never showed up, and I’m calling off the engagement, Rita, so if you read this good riddance, so I had time to read the signs.

Did you know you can go to prison for loitering? At first I thought it said “littering,” and of course everyone agrees that someone who drops a paper cup on the sidewalk should be put away for fifteen years. But no, it said “loitering” was punishable by fine or imprisonment.

As I understand it, loitering is the crime of remaining stationary longer than the cop who observes you thinks you ought to be wherever you are. For example, the signs say you can go to prison for “loitering” on the benches at the intersection of Murray and Darlington. Normally you would think that sitting in one place would be the purpose of a bench, but if you do it you’re loitering. I suppose you’re meant to fidget from one bench to another, but how many times a minute do I have to move? If you move six times in one minute but the cop thinks you should move eight times, off to prison you go.

Well, no wonder we’re spending so much money on incarceration, when everyone who isn’t an Olympic sprinter can end up in prison for sloth. Our jails are stuffed with people whose crime was inertia, and we’re paying tens of thousands apiece to house them at the public expense.

Now, I am not an unreasonable man. I do not like to point out a problem without having a solution to suggest. My proposal is a sensible one that solves the problem of expensive and overcrowded prisons while at the same time preserving the criminality of loitering, which appears to be a dear and treasured American principle necessary to maintain our hallowed tradition of freedom. We shall keep the crime of loitering on the books, but simply move the location. Instead of making it a crime to loiter on a bench along the sidewalk, we shall make it a crime to loiter in prison. Upon conviction, the penalty will be instant expulsion. Since I understand that the conditions in our prisons are favorable to loitering, I expect the prison population to be diminished by a considerable percentage just in the first year. —Sincerely, Dr. Hasdrubal M. McClutch, Associate Professor of Ancient Semitic Languages and Pickleball, Duck Hollow University.