Today, I made my quarterly trip to the can recycling center at Wal-Mart. Tossing my pride to the wind, I embraced my inner bag lady and rolled on up with no less than seven garbage bags full of empty pop cans (most of which were produced by untitledhusband and his six-can-a-day Diet Coke habit). Consuming the amount of artificial sweeteners and chemicals that he does, I would not so much as raise one over-tweezed eyebrow if he were to shit out a kidney one of these days. But I digress.
After today’s visit, I staunchly stand by my claim that the Wal-Mart can recycling center spawns more malaise, discontent and civil unrest than Al-Qaeda, the Catholic church and George Bush combined. All the ingredients are there — desperation, malfunctioning machines, disease-spreading pop can spoo. Add to the mix a few toothless NASCAR fans, a screaming toddler and some hung-over twenty-somethings turning in their beer cans, and KERPLEWIE! It’s a powder keg ready to blow. And on this particular day, that’s just what happened.
I was standing there with my mountain of cans when things went all Jerry Springer. This lady (whom I should’ve know was batshit crazy by the jaunty tilt of her polar fleece chapeau) starts going off on this normal-looking woman standing next to her. At first, I thought the two were joking with each other. Being elbow-to-elbow in hell’s foxhole can make old friends out of anyone. But this wasn’t the case. No, these two weren’t swapping rhubarb pie recipes. Indeed, these bitches were about to throw down.
Once I sensed the impending scuffle, I backed my cart up a few feet and eagerly waited for crazy hat lady to pop out her teeth and start delivering pokes. But alas, we were saved by the overflow of crushed pop cans in the normal lady’s machine. Once it quit working, she high-tailed it out of there. Both women finished their business and went their seperate ways.
After recycling what amounted to 400 pop cans, I was damn near ready to march on back to the fine cutlery aisle and saw off my weary, contaminated hands with a 50-cent steak knife. Craziness. It’s contagious.
Diet Coke is far worse than Crack, I swear it’s true. If left to my own devices I would probably down a twelve pack a day with ease. I’m trying to drink more water, I hear that you will live forever if you drink the bottled stuff. I have also pretty much backed down to 1 cup of coffee a day (down from 10) Oh the vices we live with…
Being long-time residents of NY state, we had to deal with the can deposit machine nightmare for several years. Then finally I said to my wife… “Look… if somebody offered to haul that giant sticky pile of aluminum out of out pantry for $5… would you take them up on it??” The answer was clearly yes. So nowadays we forgo our nickel and put them out to the curb. They still get recycled, and from time to time, homeless people (who need the nickels more than we do) will pick through them, so… it’s actually like a Good Deed all around.
This is one of your best. Laughed and laughed. So captures the Wal-Mart scene and the hell of recycling. I always used to tell my husband, who loved the idea of recycling but had a hard time making it to the recycling center, that creating a freakin landfill in the garage was not GREEN.
You forgot to tell mention how much $ you earned hauling those seven bags and cause i’m noisy, whatdya buy? Did you leave it $ at the evil empire?
Mike - you’re so right. they don’t call it coke for nothin’.
Thanks, V-Grrrl. I’m happy to amuse.
Rhonda - I earned $19 and some cents. I ended up buying black picture frames that now hang from this ridiculously overpriced item in my newly redecorated living room. The whole display looks wicked-cool though. But damn. $50 for a piece of black metal and some grosgrain ribbon. Fucking Pottery Barn. They’re the devil.
The cans would not have looked so good on your wall