Tell me you didn't
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
"Did you just throw that out the window?" asked my daughter from California, obviously horrified. "Tell me you didn't! I can't believe it!"
Her mother, from Kansas, looked guilty but she had no time to justify her behavior.
"You do remember that in California that would be a $500 fine. Jess do you condone this?" she poked my sister driving the car, just in case she hadn't noticed our discussion. Discussion, heck, debate
Now her mother (I must confess that's me) is attempting to rationalize what she had just done. (TTT is looking over my shoulder as I write this, "You aren't going to tell them that you did it, are you? Just say you were about to do it and she stopped you. You do know you can be fined for littering.")
OK, folks, by now you are probably envisioning me throwing a whole tub of French fries out the window or a jumbo size drink or a bag of trash that was under my feet — or worse yet, the bag of trash from the kitchen that was too big to fit into the already full trash container. NO, none of the above.
What I threw out the window was a piece of chewed gum that I was needing to get rid of, wrapped (here's the really offensive part by littering standards) in a tiny little piece of cellophane, biodegradable, I'm sure, from the cinnamon flavored Jolly Rancher that I was about to pop into my mouth. I didn't want that gum escaping and getting on something in Mom's car — there, I've defended myself.
"No, I don't encourage her to throw things out the window," Jess was sputtering in the front seat. "She doesn't even want me to spit sunflower seed shells out the window." I quickly joined in to pacify things a little.
"I'll tell you what happens," Jana was rising to the occasion because she could smell that I was attempting to downplay my sin. "Next you'll be dumping trash at the end of the alternative road and then an old washing machine in the ditch. Mother, you're becoming a redneck."
"Tell me she didn't say that," you might be gasping now, but she did. I know because I wrote it down. This was one of those topics that I had to talk about in this column — littering — and I had to remember the pertinent dialogue.
"I've got to have something to write on," I demanded, "Quick, before I forget what you said." Now my daughter is looking at me with that glint in her eye that says, "I hope that mother's problem isn't genetic."
Jess handed me a pen out of the glove compartment, I rummaged around until I found the Time magazine Tony had given me to read — and I started to write on the mostly blank back page that thankfully had a Yaris (that's some new car) ad.
Just in case you are wondering, I'm really against littering. I'm horrified when the teenagers in front of us toss their beer cans out the window into the ditch or open the car door at the stop light and set their Coke on the road. When we first moved to Kansas and I started writing this column, I told Jessica, "Sometime I have to write about people throwing trash everywhere — it's worse here than in California. Just look at the ditches!" It is worse in the Midwest than on the West Coast, trust me. Just like you see more people overweight in Kansas than you see in California, more bouffant hairdos, more caps. "I'll tell you what else I notice," said my daughter as we sat in the restaurant eating, "There are more sweet, kind, good-hearted clean-cut people here, smiling and waving."
Yes, she DID say that! I wrote it down and I'm encouraged by that comment on another day in the country. I'm also busy writing 100 times, "I will not litter, I will not litter, I will not litter, I will not litter, I will not litter. Not even gum," to send to her to prove that I've repented of my reDneck ways.
