When our daughter graduated from high school, she and most of her class holed up there afterward for an all-night ritual designed to keep those seniors safe until dawn. There was pizza and cotton candy. There was an artist applying temporary tattoos, another artist drawing caricatures, and a hypnotist. There was karaoke. And there were prizes -- cool prizes, big prizes.
My husband and I were part of the army of parents who orchestrated the event, and toward the end of the evening we were on trash duty.
Yeah, trash duty.
We wheeled around a big can and tossed the debris the kids had left behind. When I came upon the third half-eaten cup of yogurt on the floor in the gym, it hit me. What, exactly, had these kids learned in eighteen years? Where was all the idealism they’d spewed only a few hours earlier at the big ceremony? We were about to unleash almost two hundred creatures on the world, and it was embarrassing. Who, exactly, was going to clean up after them?
I’m generalizing, granted. Some kids -- like ours -- walked their trash the few feet to a receptacle as they went about their evening, picking up things their friends had left behind. We were taking a break when one gal tossed her trash in the can in front of us, and my husband made a little ceremony out of thanking her. Which was fine. Which struck me as incredible, that now the way you stood out among the rest of your class was by…not littering.
Older people have complained about the younger generations since time began, and to devote this much space to kids who litter might come off as cranky. There’s a point worth making, though. The people you work with someday will care much less about your fancy degree than they will about what you’re like to work with.
Will you be the person who uses up the last bit of coffee and leaves the pot on the burner for someone else to refill? Who takes the last donut from the bakery and doesn’t bother to toss the box? Who brings her kids into work on a Saturday morning and lets them leave a trail of destruction for someone else to deal with Monday?
Who cares how much you want to change the world if someone else has to follow around behind you, changing it back?
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Yes, wouldn't the world be a better place if everyone just picked up after themselves! It would be a good start, anyway