The Vanishing Trash Can

Some things make no sense to me.

Like when My Lovely Wife uses the word “geehawing,” for example. Whenever she utters the word, I expect a jug band to start playing and Roy Clark to introduce the next Hee Haw Honey.

Mohawks on grown men also bewilder me. If you’re over the age of, say, twenty-three, and you’re not a member of a punk band, yet you insist on sporting a Mohawk, then you need not wonder why you keep getting passed over for that promotion. Well-coiffed hair and clean shirts just might open doors to new opportunities. Mohawks and ear gauges do not have the same proven track record.

One recent mystery that has perplexed me is that of the vanishing trash can.

Years ago, someone came to the conclusion that the reliable old trash can was lonely and needed a friend. Recycling bins soon were paired with trash cans in high-profile locations, such as shopping malls and airports. This was sensible and offered convenience to millions of recycling-minded people who didn’t care enough about carbon footprints to stop using plastics, but wanted to feel good about their used recyclables being reused by someone else who also didn’t really care about carbon footprints.

In the past few months, however, I have noticed a reduction in the number of available trash cans in certain places, even to the point of there being none where, not too long ago, there might have been several in plain sight at all times.

The airport at Charlotte has always made sense to me, in as much as an airport can. The layout is simple – concourses leading out from a central hub, gates numbered sequentially, conveniently located eateries, and, until recently, plenty of trash cans dotting the landscape. Now they are all but extinct. In July, when I flew out of Charlotte for a business trip to Denver, I must have walked off half the calories from that Manchu Wok teriyaki chicken bowl before finding a can in which to deposit my trash. Not that there weren’t bins. There were plenty of bins at my disposal if I had plastics, or aluminum cans, or unsoiled paper products I wanted to get rid of, just no trash cans. I started all the way at the end of Terminal B and moved methodically from gate to gate without luck, until I finally dropped off my goods in the nearest bathroom. I was so miffed, I didn’t even bother tipping the uniformed man who hands out mints and pretends to clean the toilets (but who actually just stands around singing and watching everyone pee).

Not trash cans.

Even cruise lines seem to be following this annoying trend. During the Royal Caribbean cruise we took this summer to celebrate our upcoming twentieth anniversary, we dared to sneak bananas out of the Windjammer Café and eat them while kicking back in the lounge chairs on Deck 4. I know what you’re thinking: “Blackmarket Windjammer bananas on Deck 4? What extravagant luxury!” But, when I hoisted my widening cruisy keister off the taut plastics straps of the Deck 4 chair to dispose of the banana peels, there was no trash can to be found anywhere.

• Twenty feet down past the sleeping old couple? Recycling bins.
• Around the workers chipping rust off mysterious rusting cruise ship parts? Recycling bins.
• Another twenty feet beyond the happy family trying to kill bystanders with shuffle board pucks? Recycling bins!

It might be paper. Maybe. (Shhh…)

Eventually, it came down to either chucking the peels overboard or defying the stenciled lettering on the bins and letting the crew sort it out later. I chose the latter.

I’m not against the idea of recycling. I’m happy to pretend my diet soda bottle will – without the use of harsh chemical processes that promote acid rain, fish kills, and a depletion of the ozone layer – be magically transformed by communal hippie pixies into a sparkly, clean, brand new diet soda bottle for someone else to use tomorrow.

I just want some consideration for the times I’m not trying to save the planet. I want consideration for those times I’m carrying banana peels, or an empty Manchu Wok bowl, or seven candy bar wrappers and a crumpled Dorito’s bag. In short, I want the world to start geehawing with the idea that, no matter how many recycling bins it thrusts in my face, sometimes I just want to throw crap away.

© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Ship of Fools

We enjoy cruising, which is why we recently spent seven days on Royal Caribbean's Freedom of the Seas to celebrate our upcoming twentieth anniversary.

We enjoy having our room cleaned daily (sometimes several times a day). We enjoy being offered a variety of activities from which to choose. We enjoy sitting by the pool napping, secure in the knowledge we couldn't be doing anything productive even if we wanted to. And we enjoy eating food we didn't have to prepare, multiple times a day, without regard for cholesterol levels or blood sugar because, after all, we're on vacation, dammit.

I do expect, however, should we choose to cruise again in the next few years, we might elect to sail on a slightly smaller vessel. There's a critical mass of passengers a ship can take on before service begins to slip from specialized to generic, leaving one to come away feeling more like a sheep in a herd instead of a pearl in an oyster.

The Freedom of the Seas carries 4,300 passengers and 1,200 staff at maximum capacity. That's a population greater than that of 10 of the 12 incorporated towns in the county we call home, and roughly one-third of the population of our town.

A sane man wouldn't willingly spend a week locked in a confined area with one-third of his town's folk -- sleeping in cramped conditions under one roof, eating the same food, sharing the same limited selection of public toilets. But you put that confined space out at sea, fill up a few pools, light up a few cabaret shows, keep the alcohol and consumme flowing, and it suddenly changes from a potential nightmarish post-hurricane shelter at the New Orleans Superdome to a tropical luxury vacation.

Our biggest issue with the size of the ship, however, wasn't necessarily the service. Sure, the pizza in the promenade was low-grade cardboard topped with plastic cheese. It's true, some of the passengers weren't held to any kind of dress code in the formal dining room. Yes, Royal Caribbean's different onboard services are so siloed that we personally had to track down the manager of one of the onboard restaruants in order to have a bill corrected, and there were only enough 3D glasses for a quarter of the seats in the ship's theater.

All of that aside, the real problem with being cooped up with so many people for such a long period of time is the people themselves. Taken individually, human beings are tolerable, at best. Gather together a crowd of us and instill in us a bloated sense of entitlement and our true colors come blazing through with unfiltered glory.

Like the time, during our honeymoon cruise, when we took the galley tour. As we stood there waiting for the line to move, a father and his young child were separated by marauding band of senior citizens who, apparently, felt they were above the need to stand in line with the rest of us rabble. As they worked their way along ahead of the rest of us, but not quite out of earshot, I commented to My Lovely Wife:

"It's okay. They just want to make sure they see the kitchen before they die."

This time around the dinner table proved the most interesting place to meet unique people. And, yes, by unique I mean irritating.

We had know-it-alls who commandeered dinner conversation by telling (and sometimes retelling several times during the same evening) pointless stories that frequently disproved the very points they were trying to make. We had die-hard cruise loyalists who mistook detailing the difference in quality of free alcohol on the various cruise lines for interesting conversations. And, finally, we had borderline alcoholics who didn't realize their incessant discussion about the quantity of free alcohol on our particular cruise had me wondering if we would need to stage an intervention before formal night. Let's just say dinner conversation was strained, at best.

We did meet several pairs of people at random locations around the ship with whom we managed to have quite pleasant conversation, which was a relief because it meant we might not be the social misfits at our dinner table.

In the end, we will cruise again some time in the future, but next time we'll be sure to bring the kids, or go with friends, or maybe just hire some friendly looking people to sit at dinner with us.



2014 Mark Feggeler