Memoirs

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

By The Boss ⋅ January 28, 2009 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅  Print This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Last night, my phone rang. I answered expecting to hear Laura’s voice, but instead it was a 7 year old voice. My niece Anne had called to ask Aidan about her 100th day at school. She had heard that Aidan got to dress up like someone who was 100 years old, and she wanted to hear about her day.

Anne is 7, but she’s that most mature person I know. When I said, “I’m sorry Anne, Aidan is already asleep.” She said, “Oh, that’s fine. I just wanted to hear about her day at school and ask her what it was like to dress up like she was 100.”

Then she said:

“I was very sad on the school bus today, do you know why?”

My mind took me to the days that I rode the school bus, and I begin to think of all the things that made me sad. Missing my mom, other kids being mean, but that wasn’t made Anne sad.

“I was staring out the bus window and you know what I saw? I saw trash everywhere. It was all on the roads, especially the school. The school was damaged by all the trash and it made me very sad. I think we need to get a bunch of trash bags and maybe we could go and pick up all that trash.”

“That’s a good idea, Anne.”

“Do you know what my teacher told me? She said, that she read in the paper that the dumps were full of trash and that people were still bringing trash there. So, I think I we should put all the trash in the recycling.”

“I think so too.”

“If we don’t clean it up by tomorrow the wilderness will be ruined forever.”

“Maybe you need to ask your mom and dad if that’s OK for you to do tomorrow.”

“Well, I will have to make sure I don’t have a lot of homework. Sometimes I don’t have a lot and maybe tomorrow will be one of those days.”

Then I asked her about school and I asked her what her favorite subject was. Then she asked me what a subject was, and I was like, “YES! I know something that she doesn’t” Then she told me reading was her favorite thing to do at school.

Then she said, “Well, Madeline is back! You can talk to her now. Goodbye.”

Madeline is about to be 5, and I have finally figured out that Madeline is really Rainbow Brite. She fills the world with sparkly stars and color, and given the opportunity I will buy her a white horse and rainbow colored moonboots.

Madeline told me about going to the store with her dad, and that they were back now, and that she loved me. She then handed the phone to her dad, and I am sure it’s because Murky Lurky was off trying to steal color from the world somewhere, and she needed to save the day.

Laura has 3 AMAZING little girls. A-MA-ZING I tell you. Jacob is going to need a shotgun, and an 8 foot wall around their house. He made this little motion detector thing for their garden to scare the deer off, and it would say, “Get out of my garden!” Or something like that. I imagine there will be a motion detector outside of their house that says, “Stay away from my daughters! They’re not allowed to date until they’re 30!”

I’m going to write more later when my computer stops being the tortoise from the DSL commercials.

To be continued…

Tags: niece