It’s a scenario that is likely to be familiar to many Keep Massachusetts Beautiful volunteers: you’ve spent an hour or two in the morning picking up litter in your neighborhood and you’re feeling pretty good about what you’ve accomplished. The curbs and sidewalks you patrol are pristine.
But then….later in the day, you’re driving along that same route on an errand, and there it is: a hubcap lying on the sidewalk, like a steaming cow pie that’s been dumped on the dining room table right before your guests arrive for brunch. The classy ambience you’ve worked so hard to establish has been ruined.
What do you do?
According to the experts at the Massachusetts Institute for Litter-Phobia, there are three options:
OPTION 1: Just leave the hubcap where it is and forget about it. Heck, you’ve done your job; let somebody else deal with this new piece of litter.
The problem with Option 1 is that it can be very difficult, if not impossible, to get that hubcap out of your mind. It’s a cognitive parasite, a glowing, pulsating disk that invades your consciousness as you try to read a book, eat a meal, watch the Red Sox lose, or sleep. Then things get worse. Your significant other sneaks up behind you to deliver a huge, affectionate hug, and you respond, “not tonight, dear, I have a hubcap – I mean, a headache.”
Clearly, this option has its drawbacks. It can literally trash your day…and evening.
OPTION 2: As soon as you return home, ask your significant other to walk the half mile to the location of the hubcap and retrieve it. Initiate your request by saying, “you know, it’s time that someone in this household besides me does their part to keep our neighborhood clean. Guess who that someone is?”
If you try Option 2, please let me know how things turn out.
OPTION 3: Go ahead and bite the bullet. Make your way back to the scene of the crime and pick up the hubcap yourself. This choice has the obvious benefit of immediately restoring the feng shui of your neighborhood. Now you’ll be able to read, eat, watch TV, and sleep with a sense of inner peace.
The danger, of course, is that Option 3 can represent the first step onto a slippery slope. A hubcap is a pretty flagrant piece of litter in terms of the way it defiles the landscape. But what if the newly deposited detritus is a less conspicuous item like a water bottle, beer can, or fast-food bag? Do any of these warrant a return trip on your part?
To further complicate matters, what if neighbors with a grudge against you start tossing individual pieces of trash on the sidewalk just to see how many times they can get you to come back to pick them up? You run the risk of turning into a warped version of laboratory rat, a pathetic creature repeatedly pressing a tiny lever in order to receive a food pellet. This is not a pretty picture. Eventually, the mean, obnoxious children of those neighbors will begin taunting your kids at school.
The choice of which option to pursue is yours. Keep Massachusetts Beautiful does not mandate how volunteers should respond to the Hubcap Dilemma. Philosophers tell us that there is no single path to inner peace…or a litter-free neighborhood. Good luck on your journey!
Mike Morris is a retired professor of psychology from the University of New Haven who moved to Framingham, MA in 2022. His primary avocations are satirical writing and pursuing street litter with a vengeance. His humor blog, University Life, can be accessed at https://universitylife.michaeladrianmorris.com.
