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My obsession for recycling gets
the last, um, laugh on me
By Ashley
Zarate
September 15, 2008 | Only two things can make me barf.
These two things involve running more than my body can
handle, and somewhere between 17 and 18 shots of alcohol.
I don't ever count dry heaving or those times when you
throw up a little bit in your mouth and are forced to
swallow. Since I hate myself, these are also my two
favorite hobbies.
The number of times I have vomited can be counted
on one of my hands. Having a stomach made of steel comes
in handy 173 percent of the time and I will remind you
of my gift while you are leaning over a bench at 4 A.M.
barfing up your life. I love to toot my own horn. Lucky
for the world, I distinctively remember those few times
I have spewed chunks, and the last time deserves a tip
of the cap. It is the one and only time I have thrown
up that didn't involve booze or running. It involved
something much more powerful.
Drinking out of water bottles is a daily occurrence
in my home. I rarely use a cup, mostly because our tap
water freaks me out. It looks like Alka-Seltzer for
the first 20 minutes after it comes out of the faucet.
That's sketchy, so bottled water it is. The only problem
with bottled water, besides the fact that it's overpriced,
not that delicious and borderline annoying, is the overwhelming
pressure society places upon us to recycle those plastic
bottles.
I like to think of myself as an earth conscious human
being. I never litter, I try to reuse and I even use
those cloth grocery bags instead of plastic ones. Even
with all of my amazing earth skills, society still hates
on me when I trash those bottles instead of recycling.
So, being immune to peer pressure, I put on my game
face and pulled the oversized recycling bucket out of
the garage.
After a few weeks I began to realize how much of an
obsession recycling can be. I found myself refilling
the water bottles with tap water and soda. I even rinsed
them out before I tossed them into the bucket to be
melted down and resold to me in record time.
Cans were next. The bucket would be overflowing with
beer and Pepsi cans when the recycling men came to pick
it up twice a month. I would stand at the door and wave
like the community savior that I am. They loved me.
As summer wore on, so did my obsession. I found myself
sneaking to my neighbors' recycling buckets because
mine was too full. Cans and bottles filled more than
one trash can and the garage started to look like a
homeless shelter for recyclables. It also began to smell.
Then it happened. My perfect world of blue recycling
buckets and steel stomachs came crashing down. Brace
yourself.
Sunday mornings are usually rough for me considering
my extracurricular activities happen mostly on Saturday
nights. It was one of those awful Sunday mornings that
I stumbled out of my front door wiping the hangover
from my eyes and carrying a trash can full of recycling
in one hand and a can of cold Diet Pepsi in the other.
I was planning on finishing the drink on the walk to
the recycling but became distracted when I noticed there
were beer cans all over my front yard. I started to
pick them up but I'm an idiot. I mixed my Pepsi can
up with the other cans and without noticing, I took
a huge gulp out of one of the beer cans. It did not
contain beer.
That beer can had been used for someone's awful chewing
tobacco habit. I drank some moron's spit. Spit that
had been sitting in a beer can collecting bacteria on
my front lawn for hours.
I barfed all over my precious recycling bucket in
front of a Sunday audience of churchgoers. It was either
my barf going everywhere or my explicit screams that
kept them at bay that day, but the cul-de-sac has never
recovered.
The neighbors now come and ask if I would like to
use their recycling buckets when mine looks too full
and when their dull stories about grandchildren start
to bore me, I just say I feel ill.
I may have no redeeming social values, but I recycle,
and I'm 139 percent sure that means I win.
NW
MS |
