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

Shu-Shu the Pirate

It's no secret kids loved their stuffed toys.

I'm 43 years old and my old Snoopy is hidden away in the top of my office closet, not because I'm ashamed of him, but because I don't want my kids playing with him. Snoopy is old and frail. They might damage him beyond repair. Besides, he's mine.

The boys still have many of their stuffed animals, too. Although at times the number swelled to zoo-like quantities, presently each boy has only four animals in bed with him on any given night. The full cast of characters might fluctuate slightly from night to night, but both boys have favorites that always take the spotlight.

The German, for instance, has Giraffy, a red and white giraffe given to him years ago by his late Grandma. Hot on Giraffy's heels in terms of popularity is a gray squirrel purchased from the gift shop on one of the Royal Caribbean ships. Can you guess what his name is? That's right, it's Squirrelly. You'd think we would expect more out of the child we consider to be our most creative.

Squirrelly almost didn't make it home from that cruise. He went missing one day and the German was inconsolably bereft. We searched our cabin to no avail, then finally contacted housekeeping to see if Squirrelly had accidentally been sent to laundry with the bed sheets. Assuming we were accusing him of stealing a stuffed toy, our cabin steward arrived and, essentially, tore the room apart looking for him. I suppose fear of being deported back to Latvia on account of a nine-dollar, t-shirt wearing squirrel was coursing through his brain as he searched, but he finally did find the toy under a mattress. Crisis averted, Latvia homecoming avoided, we set full steam ahead!

For the Italian there is and has only ever been one stand-out favorite -- Little Puppy. Even now, at the ripe old age of 10, the thought of losing Little Puppy would be enough to bring the Italian to full-on nervous breakdown. And because the silly thing has been so unconditionally loved throughout the years it has taken on near mythical status in our happy home. When the time comes to store these mementos of early childhood for safekeeping, Little Puppy will be a difficult one for us to pack away.

For a brief period, Little Puppy had a runner up, a stand-in, a vice president, as it were. Hoot (an owl, if you can't figure that out on your own) also joined our family during the same cruise as Squirrelly, only soon thereafter was permanently disfigured when our poodle got hold if it and chewed off one of its eyes. Despite Oma's attempts at ornithological ocular surgery, the bird never regained its former glory, though it has lately been spotted atop the bed.

Our Daughter had several favorites when she was very little. In the stuffed toy category were a St. Bernard ("Bernie") and a Dalmation ("Dottie"). These two dogs instilled in me the belief that TY, the creator of Beanie Babies, has discovered some new indestructable cloth out of which to makes its toys. Bernie and Dottie withstood long car trips, multiple dining experiences in high chairs with pureed foods, diaper changes, vomit, and hours of playtime at the hands of toddlers. I should look so good as those two surviving toys.

Being a girl, Our Daughter also had several prize dolls. I'm not talking about collector's items or the naked Barbies crammed into the baskets under her bed -- check now and you might still find a few -- but instead I speak of the plastic-headed, fabric-bodied, bean-filled gatherers of grime and filth known as Shu-Shu and Miranda. We asked her recently if she still had them around. It had been a while since I had seen Miranda, and Shu-Shu was all but a distant memory for me. She assured us they were in her room somewhere. It seems the poodle worked her magic on them as well, as Miranda is missing several fingers and Shu-Shu, like Hoot, is in dire need of an eye patch.

A quick search to collect these special toys for a group photo yielded all but Shu-Shu. If the poodle has had any say in the matter, by now Shu-Shu might be off somewhere getting fitted for a wooden leg and a hook.




© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Thinner By a Strand

Two months ago, I tried behaving myself.

"No more pizza, French fries, or beer," I said.

Our spring break Disney cruise was fast approaching and I didn't need a scale to tell me I was overweight. When your "skinny" jeans won't button and your shirt collars make your head feel like it's about ready to pop off, you know you've been over-indulging. Fortunately, I wasn't too far gone. Maybe just 10 pounds would do the trick, get me into the zone in which I could kid myself into thinking the lack of love handles meant I was in good shape.

One month ago, I made a second attempt at behaving.

"Stop dropping handfuls of dark chocolate into your fat free yogurt," I told myself.

I had managed to nix the beer, fries and pizza, but the chocolate kept throwing itself at me, demanding to be eaten while simultaneously preaching to me about the many suspected health benefits of two ounces daily of dark chocolate. And, if two ounces is good for me, then ten ounces is like a super strength multivitamin with a V8 chaser and a few laps around the block thrown in for good measure.

Portions were also undermining my efforts. I was reminded of a time, long ago, when I went to a salad bar with a friend who was trying to diet. He layered his plate with lettuce, then piled it high with eggs, cheese, croutons, bacon bits, and full fat thousand island dressing. Hey, it was a salad, right?

Two weeks ago, I started giving up.

"Just try to maintain the weight you're at now," I said.

Maybe if I hold at my present puffiness, I can pull a desperation fast at the last minute and board the ship with a few pounds of wiggle room. I gain five pounds once my feet leave the gangplank, so I've got to give it some kind of effort before hitting the buffet, the formal dinner, the cocktail hour, the poolside cantina, the breakfast buffet, and the room service.

One week to go, and the hard reality of a failed effort presented itself in the form of a half dozen pairs of shorts that no longer fit comfortably around the waist. I could try kidding myself into thinking there must be something wrong with our storage bins, because these all fit fine last summer, but what's the point? Besides, we bought enough new clothes for the trip that I don't have to worry about running around the ship pantsless, which is a good thing since this is a family cruise.

At the very least, I feel better about myself since yesterday because my Lovely Wife cut my hair, and not a moment too soon. No longer thick enough to be called shaggy at any length, my hair was nonetheless far too long and becoming increasingly unruly. It either poofed out in ways that made me look like I'd been dropped on my head at birth, or it was shellacked into place like I'd combed it with buttered toast. Now at a much more reasonable length, it draws less attention to the chubby roundness of my face.

But maybe it isn't just a trick of the eye. Maybe this magical haircut actually did help take off some of that excess weight I'd been trying to shed for the last couple months. A quick trip to the bathroom scale proved my assumption correct. I had lost four pounds since that morning, all thanks to my Lovely Wife's tonsorial talents!

Of course, keep in mind the scale is psychotic. On Saturday, it said I was 211. This morning, it told me I was 164. Regardless, I choose to believe my haircut makes me look four pounds thinner, and therefore I am.

All I need to know now is which deck has the midnight buffet...



© 2011 Mark Feggeler