captain planet and the planeteers

Grant's responsibility at the Lloyd house at Caltech was the recycling. For that, his housemates dubbed him "Captain Planet" (after one of our favorite cartoons) early on in his freshman year. As he got older and new college students joined the house, he acquired some helpers, who were, in turn, named "the planeteers".

I'm going to borrow these copyrighted titles, although my planeteers are a lot smaller:



My story begins the first time I had those kids in the white house over. I keep my recycling in the corner of the kitchen, in nondescript cardboard boxes, and if you're 5'7", you wouldn't pay them any attention because they're by your feet. However, if you're barely over two feet tall, they're practically at eye level, and you notice them.

"Ms. Train, you drink those?" By "Train" I think the little one means "Chang", and he's referring to the empty Anchor Steam and Amber Bock in my glass recycling box. The bottles are overflowing their container, and I probably should have taken them in long ago.

Uh-oh, the exemplar teacher must think fast. "Some are soda bottles, and others I pick up off the side of the road. I recycle them." Not a lie, slightly true, and just leaving some parts out so I don't compromise my morally-uncorrupt status in the community.

I then proceeded to explain recycling to them, but to this day, I don't think they grasp the concept. In their minds, it was imprinted simply as, "Ms. Chang collects bottles" or possibly even more rudimentary as, "Ms. Chang collects trash."

So a month goes by without event, until today, when I woke up completely committed to being productive. No luck: I was interrupted at late morning, but not a big deal, I invited the kids in for a little bit, and they strummed all the open notes on the guitar and sang and clicked through the photos on my computer (agh, my personal life -- exposed!). Within the hour, I said good-bye, and they were on their way.

What I underestimated was their boredom on a sunny spring day. Before long, I heard feet tromping up the grass (are you kidding me?), and pretty soon after, knock-knock. They had buckets and armfuls of bottles and cans for me to recycle, mostly picked up from the side of the road, and hence, muddy and half-full of various liquids.

It's awesome, I know. I accepted them in my kitchen with praises for their collectors. "Ms. Train, we can get you more. Do you have boxes to put them in?" Not wanting to discourage this habit, I pulled out more stash of boxes I'd been saving for moving, and they ran off. And they came back another time...

and another...

and another...

and another. And each time, I swear the bottles and cans were muddier. And their shoes, too, which meant my kitchen floor, too. By now my trailer's beginning to have a fermenting smell to it. I stopped them from heading out on their hunt again, and introduced them to the historically female role of washing the bottles and cans. It was a brilliant way to temper their fervor for bottles, but now I needed them washed, and they were sneaking off.

When all was said and done, it was five o'clock. And I had a mess to sweep, vacuum, and mop up. And my banjo also now had a broken string because I shouldn't have trusted young, rambunctious children to eat their snack inside by themselves.

It was amusing, it was sweet. But I don't want kids of my own anytime soon.