"Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garbage grow?" ...

"With old tin cans and plastic bags, all prettily lined up in a row!"

This morning as I left for work I was delayed, because the truck collecting the monthly stockpile of recycling goodies blocked the entrance to our driveway. As I watched them I thought of my sister laboriously separating all the glass and plastic containers into different barrels, binding up the paper and cardboard into tidy bundles, and then dragging everything down the length of the driveway in the dark last night to set them all at the curb. As always the end result was a masterpiece of organization, the pile was set succinctly together, happily awaiting their final journey to that recycling center in the sky. And as I sat patiently in my car waiting for the truck to get past my driveway, they swiftly and summarily dumped everything together into the back of the garbage truck. At first I idiotically believed they were placing the lot in a manner that would allow them to sort through it all later. Well, it seemed as if they knew what I was thinking, because one of the men pulled a lever and a partition of steel swung down, engulfed everything and pulled the mass back up into the belly of the beast, compacting it all together. Obviously they made their point, they wouldn’t be separating the glass from the paper anytime soon. And just as swiftly as Santa jumps into his sleigh to be whisked away to the next chimney, the sanitation engineers disappeared, and I could almost hear them sneer at me as they rolled out of sight.

And so as I sped off to work I wondered, what’s the point? Why should we follow edicts and rules if there is no rationale for their being set in the first place? Why did my sister bother separating the recyclables when they’re all simply mashed together in the end? Then it occurred to me that although they were the rulers of refuse, I thankfully wasn’t the one hanging from the back of a garbage truck. So on this cold grey day I put it all into perspective and let them think they had the upper hand. Just then as I turned up the dial on my heated seat and sipped my morning coffee, I cordially waved to them as I passed. And if you've ever seen the Queen of England extend her arm in the royal wave, you know how stately the two men looked hanging off the rear of that blue coach waving in return.

CD