Spill By Bill has a memory.

The Spill is the open public corner of Spill By Bill.

Share what is bothering you, what made you laugh, what made absolutely no sense, or what happened that was too ridiculous to keep to yourself.

Open the topic to post your own story, complaint, observation, question, or everyday piece of nonsense. Bill may agree with you, disagree with you, or decide the whole situation belongs under “You Can’t Make This Sh*t Up.”

Let me tell you the riveting tale of some would-be juvenile bike thieves who had an ingenious plan snatch wheels from the utterly secure fortress that is...a city library. Wow, impressive.

One idyllic spring evening, precisely at 5:27 p.m., little Johnny and his sidekick thought they'd stumbled onto the perfect crime. Never mind the Wallstreet hustles or Vegas casino heists, no movie director in Hollywood could conceive a plot as thrilling as this stealing a bike from an unsuspecting bookworm on Columbus Road.

The dynamic duo skillfully executed their plan, striking as the sun began to fade. They slipped away silently, presumably pedalling off into the sunset on their ill-gotten gains.

But alas, these bicycle-bungling buffoons forgot one little thing. The ubiquitous surveillance cameras that grace every street corner. Their fleeting life of crime was swiftly brought to a halt by our caffeine-infused boys in blue.

Now, one might expect me to lambast our solid blue crime busters for devoting their resources to such a perilous threat to society. But I can't help but share a certain giddy satisfaction over the look of gut-wrenching defeat that must have crossed those tykes' faces when they saw the flashing lights.

Officers recovered the stolen wheels and delivered them back to their rightful owner, leaving our juvenile delinquents standing in the cold, presumably chewing over their enormously erroneous life decisions.

But before the scofflaw scamps retreated to lick their wounds and pray for sudden invisibility power, the force delivered the last blow. They let mommy and daddy know about their little cherubs' failed exploits. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at THAT dinner conversation.

Once upon a noontide dreary on ye olde Rockside Road, a brave conqueror of capitalism embarked on a quest. A quest of pilfering somewhere between $180 and $200 worth of merchandise from an innocent, cherubic business that had no freaking clue what kind of shit-show they were about to be featured in.

Now, hold on to your hipster man-buns; this isn't some Robin Hood rip-off. This is just a dime-store dickhead thinking he can outdo Black Friday without the proper participation of all the shopaholic soccer moms. Queue up dramatic thunder sound.

Captured in all his glory on state-of-the-art potato cam, this entrepreneurial enthusiast didn't bother to consider that his foray into five-finger discounting would be immortalized in the annals of HD surveillance footage. Guess who's popping up on the evening news and every social media feed from here to Timbuktu? Spoiler alert: It ain't the Easter Bunny.

Bet you didn't see that coming, did ya, Einstein? It's 2026, dearie, not 1826. Businesses have these nifty things called cameras. I understand, it's easy to get the centuries mixed up when your IQ hovers between carrot stick and moderately intelligent pebble.

Anyway, that's it. The looting lout vanished in a puff of cheap cologne and unsound decisions, leaving the business $180-ish worse off and the local law enforcement sniffing his cloud of AXE.

As for the fate of our fearless felon? Only time will tell if he'll be bringing his trade to a county jail in the near future. Stay tuned for updates.

This fantastic foray into fuckery is brought to you by the tireless 'Eye In the Sky Janitorial Services' - We're always ready to mop up the bullshit.

I'm going to tell you a warm, fuzzy little tale from Washington Street that'll wrap your heart in a snuggly blanket of unadulterated absurdity. Just another lovely day in our nonsensical reality.

So, 8:02 in the morning and the city's finest get a terrified call about 'screaming' coming from, of all the menacing hellholes, a frickin' school. Yeah, not a chop-shop, not cheap motel rooms where teeth are kept as souvenirs, but a frickin' school.

The brave knights of the realm, sworn protectors of our peace, buckle up, dial their adrenaline down to 'bored shitless' and roll towards the supposed chaotic pandemonium, which on any normal planet, would be little Jimmy and Susie enjoying a game of tag.

Only in this tin-foil hat world of ours, laughter and playground howls could quite possibly be a sign of a child army amassing or maybe a rogue teacher gone berserk with a packet of Pop Rocks and a can of Coke.

Lo and behold! Wave your surprise flags! The officers find...children playing on the playground. Oh, the horror! Tiny tots frolicking in the sunlight as they master the art of 'tag, you're it!' or 'kick the can' or whatever these kids do these days. A sight sure to curdle the blood of any Washington Street denizen.

And just in case you're wondering how our boys in blue figured it out, I reckon some crack detective work and skills of deductive reasoning Sherlock Holmes would kill for. A real whodunit mystery 'Who was screaming?' was it the kid on the slide or the one in the sandbox?

Well, they check it all out and here's the payoff it all checks out OK. Hell, I bet they even helped push a swing or two in the spirit of community service and public safety.

So there you have it, ladies and gents. Just another day in the laugh-a-minute thrill ride that is Policing 101: Hashing out and figuring out the intricacies of over-zealous citizens losing their shit over kids being kids.

In the heated asphalt jungle of Columbus Road. and Adams Street, where the concrete is cold and the egos are colder, a pre-pubescent kerfuffle kicked off at exactly, oh, I dunno, quarter past five. It was a universal call to arms or rather, tiny limp arms as our brave and undeniably underpaid keepers of the peace got a call about a juvenile-style showdown set to rock the local parking lot.

Now, hold onto your hats for this one, folks turns out this cataclysmic clash wasn't about drugs, turf or a bitchin' trading card collection. No, this was the result of a "personal disagreement." Good gracious, I do believe one of these pre-teen titans must've disagreed over who's got the bigger collection of pimples, or who's voice is beginning to squeak in all the wrong places.

Anyhow, our brave uniformed nannies arrive on the scene to find not one, but two packs of pouty punks posturing in the parking lot. But fear not, this story ends without a single patriotic tear shed. Our officers performed a veritable miracle of diplomacy, prying apart the feuding factions and serving up some stern advice "Play nice now, kiddos!"

And lest you worry about any lingering resentment among these young hooligans, rest assured the parents have been advised to call the boys in blue should any more hormonal hijinks occur. Yeah, that'll solve it.

Stay classy, Columbus Road. and Adams Street, you're a regular Wild West for the under five foot set.

Hallelujah ladies and gents, we got action. And by action, I mean the sort of crap that passes for excitement on Mapleton Ave.

Yeah, that's right. It was 4.21 p.m., prime time for criminal activity, when disaster struck. The chaos scenario? Two Ziploc-bags-full-of-jelly-and-angst kids milling about a vacant home. Lord above, what a catastrophe! Get the SWAT team, call in the National Guard, where's Batman when you need him?

Our concerned neighborhood watchdog, can I call you NeighBo WatchBo for short? got their knickers in a twist with Stop-the-presses idea to pick up that ol' dial pad and lure in the local po-po with a bone-chilling tale of juvenile loitering.

Lo and behold, our boys in blue to the rescue. Armed with something stronger than coffee, and a degree of skepticism stronger than my disgust for decaf, they arrive on the scene. I tell ya, there's more drama here than a Kardashian's family dinner.

Behold, the grand finale. Those juvenile delinquents were doing - wait for it - fetching their ball from the yard. My God, the audacity of youth these days. Ball retrieval? In broad daylight? The nerve!

No issues were found. Nah, not even a single trace of that highly sought after ‘strategically placed weed’ our insightful NeighBo WatchBo had almost guaranteed in his 911 rendition of 'Two boys enter, no weed leaves.'

Moral of our heartfelt Mapleton story, folks? Next time your kid's SuperBounce makes a daring escape to a neighbor's yard, remember there’s probably a neighborhood lunatic watching, ready to call the freakin' cops.

So, close your windows, lock your doors. The ball-fetching menace of Mapleton Ave is still out there people!

You've been entertained, and quite frankly, bored to tears in equal measure by yours truly, Spill By Bill. Sourced from the dreams of the chronically unoccupied, with special thanks to the Mapleton Ball Whisperers.

First things first, brace yourself because I’m about to drop a truth bomb that may well ruffle a few feathers. Alright then, here goes kids these days are soft. Yup, you read that right. Not weak, not bad, but unequivocally, undeniably SOFT! Now for those among you already positioning your keyboard arrows aiming at my jugular, give it a rest. Ill-informed venting does nobody any good. If you don't get the difference between 'soft' and 'weak' or 'bad' it's very likely you're a part of the problematic coddling brigade.

Today’s kid's lives are essentially an elongated summer camp, complete with emotional lifeguards ready to dive in at the faintest splash of distress. Their world is so diluted with padding and precautions that calling the rules they live by 'rules' feels ridiculously liberal. 'Gentle guidelines' enunciated lovingly through a kaleidoscope of indulgence may be a more fitting description. Breaking them only leads to platonic discussion circles, a catalogue of feelings to identify with, perhaps even a therapist thrown in, all cooing and examining the 'distress' the broken rule may have triggered.

Let’s time travel a bit here, shall we? Head back to the heady realms of the 60s, 70s, and 80s where kids learned under the unsparing law of "don’t do dumb shit or you’re gonna regret it." No emotional tact, no hurt-feelings triage, no trauma-centered chats. Just instant karma, with painful lessons learnt in real-time – a headmaster’s reprimand, a parent’s look of disappointment, or a whack of grandma’s robust wooden spoon. Those were lessons learnt, my friend and they were learnt quick.

Back then, school rules were sacrosanct. There were no arguments or exceptions. And let me tell you something, there certainly was no TikTok platform broadcasting a disobedience challenge! You simply toed the line, or swiftly gleaned why you should've in the first place. You faced the music – detention, suspension or the horror of a sealed letter to your parents spelling doomsday, and no, the teachers weren’t petrified of the parents. Ironically, these days it looks like the tables have turned significantly.

Fast forward to today, a kid who screams like a banshee, defies tasks, tosses a chair with abandon is politely handled by a system that contorts itself into unimaginable postures to avoid discomforting the child. The onus is on the adult to avoid being 'too strict,' to navigate a minefield of policies and most importantly, to steer clear of causing any emotional flare ups. TOO STRICT! Just imagine, a phrase like that getting you ridiculed out of, say, a 1978 classroom!

Here comes the raw truth, though. Kids these days aren't emotionally tougher, they are just poorly honed in dealing with the ghouls of discomfort. They grow up in an ultra-sanitized world devoid of friction, failure, and fear. They're so swaddled that a simple 'No' feels like an emotional apocalypse. That's not because they're inherently incapable, but because we've fussed over them so much they've not developed any emotional resilience.

Our generation understood resilience and we did that the hard way. We scraped knees, fought off bullies, lived through a million embarrassments and famously survived the word 'no'. Our safe spaces were wild childhoods under open skies, not plush, liveried rooms with soft corners and delicate hues. We figured issues out or stoically moved past them. All of this without any committee to validate our emotions every time Life decided to spring a little surprise.

I’m not advocating a rollback to the days of lead paint, corporal punishment, or emotional neglect. So you may recommence clutching your pearls and misquoting me out of context. That’s fine. I’ll wait.

What I am saying is this: discomfort isn’t abuse, rules aren’t oppression, and consequences aren’t trauma. They’re preparation. And a generation raised without them isn’t kinder or stronger, just less equipped.

You don’t build resilience by removing friction. You build it by surviving it.

And when the real world shows up without a counselor, a feelings chart, or a reset button, it won’t care how gentle your childhood was. It will only care whether you can stand up without collapsing.

That’s not cruelty.
That’s reality.

In the seemingly simpler times of yesteryear, red traffic lights weren't just there for ornamental purposes. You know, back when prairie dogs had more road sense than some of today’s common drivers – yeah, those days.

Back then, when a traffic light dared to flash its angry cherry hue, people stopped. There was a look of absolute respect for the law in their eyes, perhaps even a mild hint of fear. This wasn't some fearful submission to a tyrannical overlord. No! It was out of respect - respect for the law, respect for the peace it maintained and respect for each other's life for Pete's sake!

Across the good ol’ tarmac, drivers would competently grip their steering wheel like a knight with his sword, ever ready for battle against traffic rule violators. Why did they stop? Oh, just a multitude of reasons – they didn't want a ticket, they didn't want to cause an accident, they didn't want to be 'that guy'.

And let's be honest, the cops back then weren't exactly known for handing out second chances. If you know what I mean? They would brandish their ticket pad with a smug, "I told you so" grin as effectively as your Mom does with a wooden spoon when you've burnt the Thanksgiving turkey. No hesitation, no leniency, you jump a red light, you get a ticket, end of discussion.

Fast forward to today, and somehow, red lights have become optional, almost as if they're merely suggestions rather than stringent traffic rules. Heck, it's as though the traffic light is saying, "Hey, do you wanna stop? No? Ah, it's okay. Have a nice day."

Daily, drivers, like maverick Formula 1 racers, push their cars through the changing light, not simply when it tiptoes from cautionary yellow to stop-sign red, but even from a good three car lengths back. It's as if the red light is a starting gun in an imaginary race against sanity itself.

Tickets? Ha! As rare as a blue moon these days. Our modern, laid-back police forces seem to have better things to do than monitor and control traffic. Or maybe, they're just weighed down by the sheer magnitude of it all. And so, the bold and daring road-users gamble their way through the crossroads of life, playing a high-stakes game of Russian roulette. That is until they, unfortunately, cause an accident.

We laugh at those old black-and-white public safety films from the 1950s, but perhaps our society today is like one of those films, playing continuously on loop without the satisfying outcome. When did self-preservation and respect for the rules get trumped by impatience and bravado?

Maybe next year's model cars will transform red lights into smiling emojis, because that's all they seem to be: a pleasant, cheery suggestion. Or maybe it's time we stop treating the traffic laws as mere recommendations and consider them for what they are, a vital framework to keep us all safe and sound.