Other Peoples Trash....

Saturday, it was 75 degrees in Oklahoma!  Seventy-five degrees!  Every now and then, we, oklahomans, really score a special day in deep winter and we had two on friday and saturday.  It was so nice that I decided I was going to walk up to the road and pick up the trash that losers throw out their car windows into my yard and the yards around me.

Well, I took a big, black trash bag and filled up the entire thing.  I almost couldn't carry it back down the driveway.  I looked like a skinny santa claus in a bright orange osu t-shirt and torn out jeans.  I was sweaty, hot and more than a little peeved once I got into the garage.  Sweaty and hot because it was seventy-five degrees outside and more than a little peeved because I get tired of picking up after losers....

Years ago,  when I was teaching at a school in Indiana, I had the opportunity to attend the coolest outdoor educational experience a kid could have.  We bused these kids about an hour north of Fort Wayne to a little camp and for three days they stayed in little cabins with parents at night and during the day, we, teachers taught them special classes.  The english teacher had them read nature poetry and then try their hand at writing their own poetry.  The math teacher had them figure the height of trees using some formula I don't know...and I, as the science teacher, had them do lots and lots of things!  I had so many ideas that I had to get parents to help!  I had a parent teach tracking and they casted their own animal tracks, they made cells out of food and then ate the results, they identified plants and trees.  I felt that we needed to do something that taught kids how important it was to not litter so I had five families, different kinds of families, to save one weeks worth of their trash.  They only saved the items that wouldn't smell bad and they washed out the cups, bottles, things like that, after a week, I collected the trash in a special labeled trash bag.

At outdoor ed, I split the kids into five groups and gave them a trash bag and a tablet of paper.  Their job?  To examine the trash and make a profile of the family by what they could deduce from the trash.  Most of the groups sat and stared at me in disgust!  They didn't understand?  What are we supposed to do?  I explained again that our trash tells a lot about us. So after quite a bit of urging, the kids donned the gloves and sat out to work.  They opened the trashbags and began to take a look at what they had.  One sack was filled with baby food jars, diaper wipe boxes, and pizza boxes.  They deduced a young family owned that trash.  One sack was filled with bottles of geritol, coffee cans, church bulletins and kleenex boxes.  They deduced an older woman owned the trash.  One by one, the kids began to realize that even with the 'cleaned up' trash, they could still get a pretty clear picture of the person it belonged to.

Well, today, I got a pretty clear picture of the people that litter.  They are fairly young, teenagers probably, that drink mountain dew and dr pepper.  They smoke marlboros and dip skoal.  They drink a lot of soft drinks from Sonic, McDonalds and Subway.  And most of all!  They sure do drink a lot of Budwieser!  Not just Bud, Coors, Pabst, and even occasionally a Heineken!  I'm going out on a limb and say very few of these disgusting litterers are anything like me.  A middle-class, middle-aged woman. 

White trash were the two words that kept going over and over in my mind.  When I was a kid, the worst thing someone would call you was 'white trash'.  That was the lowest of lows.  White trash, it must be different than red trash or black trash.  Why in the world do I care what color of trash throws their trash out the window into my yard?  I realized how racist that really sounded....white trash.  Like I'm making levels of trash....   I got ashamed of myself for thinking that thought.....  I decided that calling anyone trash was a terrible way to think.  These people, probably just stupid kids, are not trash.  They're just misguided or maybe they don't want to get into trouble for having beer when they get home, or cigarettes, or skoal.  Maybe it flew out of the back of their truck, maybe I should just stop being so superior and get back to work......

So I just sorted out the trash into the recycling bin and got my diet coke and sat out in the sun........