The Joy Of Recycling - Plastics Here, Waste There, A Woman's Delight Until Obsession Addled Her

'I can't wait for Thursdays', Amy Parsons said to her neighbor. 'It's so satisfying'. 

There is a bell curve for everything - intelligence, abstemiousness, prurience, lawn cutting, and social graces; and so it is with recycling.  At one end of the curve, at one asymptote are those who could care less, who toss whatever trash they have in hands into the nearest bin.  

At the other end are women like Amy who parse carefully before allocating, for whom proper recycling is a Holy Grail, something that not only must be done right but feels good. 

There was something pleasurable about sizing up what she was about to throw away, sussing out the possibilities - airports now have separate recycle bins for plastic, glass, and paper next to ones for trash and food waste - and making the proper choice.  

Psychologists would put her in a mildly obsessive category, for recycling robots do the job of weeding wheat from chaff, the odd hot dog bun from the water bottle.  It's OK to make a mistake now and again, even to be cavalier once in a while, to give a 'Fuck it!' and toss whatever into whichever, but not for Amy. Punctiliousness was not an occasional matter. 

And so it was that she was often found rooting through the garbage bags in her kitchen.  Her husband did not take recycling, the environment, global warming, or climate change seriously, never paid attention to her instructions as to what went where, and tossed chicken bones, tin cans, paper napkins, and cat hair in the trash willy-nilly.  

'How many times have I told you?', Amy said to her husband who nodded, mumbled sorry, and retained nothing.  He didn't give a flying you know what about recycling. 

So on Thursdays, her trash bins in the alley were shipshape, not one item out of place, all in apple pie order.  She had sorted and sifted every kitchen garbage bag, gone through every wastepaper basket, and even rummaged through the bathroom trash to make sure there was nothing errant there. 

The sound of the recycle truck perked her ears up, and she rushed into the back yard to wait for it to come.  She watched as the garbagemen loaded the blue bin onto the hoist, listened to the familiar whine of the pulleys, winches, and gears, and waited for the thump of the trash dumped into the vault, and watched as it was compacted into a solid mass. 

 

She always breathed deeply after the truck left.  The air was cleaner thanks to her abstemiousness and environmental conscience.  Old-fashioned garbage heaps were things of the past, and the city was now both more livable and healthy. 

All well and good except that Amy didn't limit her fastidiousness to recycling.  Over the years she had become more and more meticulous - no specks in the sink, no wrinkles in the bedspread, no papers out of order on her desk, doormat aligned perfectly, bathmats changed at the first sign of use, dishtowels always ironed and neatly arranged, the utensil drawer perfectly ordered. 

The forks were all aligned, tines up, cuddling each other, ready for use.  Serving spoons were kept in cubicles separate from serving forks.  Potholders were tossed once they had a stove burn...The list was endless.

She had a maid come in once a week, but Mrs. Lopez complained that there was nothing for her to do and that she hated to take Amy's money for make-work mopping and dusting. 

When her husband caught her at her desk, moving pens, paper clips, coasters, and the computer mouse back and forth looking for just the right place for them, he knew that she had gone around the bend.  What had been a carefree, devil-may-care girl up for anything, was now unable to decide how to adjust the binder clips.  'Amy, don't you think you should lighten up a little?'. 

Of course, like most women, she objected to criticism and quickly came up with a retort, and again, like most women sought to turn the criticism on the one making it.  'You're a fine one to talk', she said, 'cavalier about the recycling, tossing forks and knives in drawers wherever, leaving hair in the sink...!'

And so it was that poor Amy went further and further around the bend until she was paralyzed with indecision, maniacally obsessive about the trash, apocalyptic on Thursday trash day, and definitely impossible to live with. 

This all started with COVID, her husband thought.  She had been a fiend about six-foot distancing, masks, disinfecting, quarantine, and calling out others for their disregard for received health wisdom.  She in fact had become a vigilante who prowled the streets of University Park, shouted a j'accuse finger at miscreants, enlisted children to act as first line overseers, broke up groups of three, kept mail isolated for three days, and had all groceries delivered. 

She wasn't the only one, of course, and there was something to be said for a negative zeitgeist.  The government was scaring the bejeezus out of ordinary citizens warning that COVID was The Big One and in so doing turned normally easy-going neighbors into Stasi informants, rats, and Ton Ton Macoute thugs. Those like his wife who already had an obsessive disability, were especially prone to government fear tactics. 

She panicked when the vaccination hotlines were always busy, and at 8:59:59 held her finger over the last digital button, pressed at 9:00 only to get a busy signal and fretting and disconsolate got out the Lysol and scrub brush and had another go at the countertops. 

The first iterations of COVID faded but new viral variants popped up, and the panic started all over again.  This variant is far worse than the previous one, the Biden Administration claimed as Doctor Fauci became the most powerful man in Washington - an Idi Amin, Pol Pot, and Josef Stalin who brooked no opposition as he closed everything down, sowing panic and disarray. 

For a woman like Amy, already addled and confused, this was like being shut up in Bedlam, bound and tethered, straitjacketed and harnessed, surrounded by screaming madwomen. 

This period too faded and ended, but the damage had been done.  Yet the progressive warnings about racism, misogyny, climate disaster, civil unrest, war, and nuclear destruction kept her mania alive.  It was a permanent corrosive, an unsettling promise of doom that made Amy even more unhinged. 

'It's Thursday', she said to her husband, now used to her St. Vitus' dance but none the less concerned about it.  He was worried about her and certain he couldn't put up with another week of her nonsense. Crazy or not, he wanted out. 

'You need to get out more', he said to her, needing a moment's peace; and surprisingly she heeded his advice.  The No Kings rallies were just what the doctor ordered - a mass, universal, solidarity of obsessive women.  There was no point to the protests, nothing like those of the Sixties where ending the war in Vietnam or the passage of a civil rights bill were in the sights of those on the National Mall.  These were simply jamborees of Trump-haters who could find no other outlet for their febrile, mad, hysteria. 

Amy was once again a happy woman, and so was her husband who, released from the penitentiary of her making, took a young lover.  Lisa from Accounting was exactly what the doctor ordered.

The only thing good and positive about the No Kings rallies was that it took Amy's mind off narrower obsessions.  Trump hating, conflating all the problems of the world in one place and giving voice to thousands of frustrated, hysterical women was just the thing.  Amy was happy and so was her husband.  Fuck the trash was the meme of the household, replaced by 'I hate him', but that at least was progress.