TheBanyanTree: High Maintenance

[Pam North]

On 5/13/06, Margaret R. Kramer <margaretkramer at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Why do people use their cars as trash receptacles?  How hard is to just
> throw your trash into the garbage can when you get home?



Wow.  Now *here* is a point of contention that hits home!

Julie said it best:  "How hard?  Hard enough!"

And with that let me add, it just ain't a priority!  I have a friend with
two little girls.  I have watched him get them out of the car in the
afternoons.  After he un-clicks their seatbelts and gets them out of their
boosters, he loads himself up with his briefcase and coffee cups and cigs
and cell.  AND he gets two lunchboxes and two kids worth of 'stuff' from the
day - artwork or notices or blankies.

He carries all of it into the house.  Wha-la!

Yesterday, on a lark, we happened to be at Lowe's together and I bought a
case of bottled water.  Since we'd gone in his car, he carried the case to
mine when we got home.  When I opened the door so he could put it in, he
commented: "Wow!  This is the cleanest I've ever seen your car!"  There was
actually nothing on the seats or floors of the backseat.  (Okay, there were
still two boxes of Gobstoppers in the cup holder on the door, but that
doesn't count!)  And this was only because just a couple of days before, my
kids and I had returned from a 'road trip' and had actually emptied the car
when we got home!

I don't have two small children to pick up after.  Actually, I have two
teenagers to follow behind, and the routine is the same!  And I just don't
care!

Oh, I *LOVE* the feeling getting into a clean car!  I love the start
brightness of a shining dash, everything wiped down, no distracting bits of
trash or wrappers on the floor, plenty of room for bodies and no work to fit
them in.

But, my car is just an extension of my house, another den, spare bedroom,
junk drawer.  I drive a GMC Jimmy.  There's no trunk.  There's just 'the
back'  It's where I store library books, for example!  That way I know I'll
get them all returned since that is the only place I put them when they're
read!  There's a big bedspead also, because one can never be sure what the
weather will be on the bleachers, or if the games will run into extra
innings!  And of course there's a chair so I won't have to sit on the
bleachers.  A chair I never remove because I'm too likely to forget to get
it again!  And sometimes I don't come home first before a game anyway.

You wanna ride in my car?  It won't take a half hour, but it will take a few
seconds.  Friends have heard this from me before:  "Just toss it into the
back, it'll be fine!"

Pam