Trash bin elf.

I don't come into town much these days, but here's me today. Can I get a Norville Island red, or are you all out of those by now? No, I don't think they're any good either, but you know - nostalgia, I guess.

And I was at this bus stop earlier, and there's this elf there with a shopping cart rummaging through the trash bin. I'm sort of surprised by this, for some reason. Like I think that's more of a human thing, and elfs ought to be beyond that stuff. But that's silly. This is real life, not the Lords or the Ring or something.

And there's this woman sitting there in the shelter with two kids. And one of them is about five, and he's closely watching this elf, and he turns to his mom.

"What's he doing?"

"He's digging in the trash bin, to find cans and bottles. He'll take them to the recycle place, and they'll give him a nickel for every one he finds."

And his older sister is like, "I sure don't want to do that when I grow up."

And the little boy is thinking hard about all this, and says to mom, "I do. I'm going to do that."

"Uh, no, you won't do that."

"Yes, I will!"

"No! No, you won't!"

But I'm thinking to myself, that would seem like a pretty good gig, when you're five.

maya

Today there was last year's calendar that needed to be thrown away. I couldn't. I took templates and made the pictures into envelopes. Tracing, cutting, folding, adhesive, blocking out an addressable area with white paint...

I suppose objectively they're not more *valuable* than any other kind of recycling. I don't think that their recipients will particularly value their being handmade--ugly calendar squares visible on the inside!--but that small physical act of reclamation is so comforting to me. Ah, I have Saved the Thing. The Thing, that would otherwise have been Trash.

The five year old has a pretty good grasp of the relative alienation of modern life, is what I may be saying here.

ropocl

Reuse is the second R and recycle is the third for a reason! Good work!

opossum

Opossums understand a similar notion. Theres good things in the trash, even the.. ahem, simple ones, understand this concept. Valuables that only a child or an animal or an elf can understand. I've found wonderful things in the trash myself. Sometimes I wander through alleys and see what I can find.

People deem a lot of beautiful things to be useful, often, I presume, in an attempt to declutter. They may not be needed, but they make the alleys prettier for a moment, before they are swept up by the garbage truck.

starbreaker

It wasn't a bad gig when I was 12, either, way back in the early 1990s. An hour of gathering would net between $10 and $20 in cash, which I would spend at the nearby secondhand books and music store. If I had anything left over, I might stop at the deli for a soda and a sandwich, too.