There’s a new question in town, propagated by twenty- and thirtysomethings wielding clipboards, and it goes like this: “Do you have a minute for the environment?” No one knows when precisely passive-aggressive social movements began–I’d look into it myself, if saving whales didn’t consume so much time–but we’re apparently headed for the day when Streetwise vendors will stop you and ask, “Do you have a second for systemic poverty? Just curious.”
My current answer for the environmentalists goes, “Not today, thanks.” It’s terse, yes, but it helps build the illusion that I’m busy and have errands to run, errands carefully designed to trample Mother Nature beneath the cloven hooves of industry. I can see you have that accusatory gleam in your eye, and you’re right, you know. This is a throwaway explanation. I’m hiding something.
The truth is simple. Not only do I lack a minute for the environment–I prefer spending the minute organizing the coupons in my glove compartment before tossing them out the window–I also enjoy devoting the other 1439 minutes to avid pollution. It started innocently enough. I’d toss a candy wrapper onto someone’s lawn, forget to leave out the recycling bin, let my car idle.
But then things took a sinister twist. Now I turn on the sprinklers, along with all the faucets I can find, during thunderstorms. Newspapers are separated by section and left in parks all over town. Magazine subscription cards are set on fire and tossed into forest preserves. You know how some bleeding hearts cut up six-pack rings, for fear of ensnaring wildlife? I will actually go and find six birds or fish or chipmunks and stuff them into their new plastic habitat.
Sure, my fingers have not been sufficiently stained by comic book ink, nor can I comment on whether the trailer cleaves faithfully to source material. But hot damn the third one causes the dork senses to tingle so, and it may very well bring about the ruination of an entire wardrobe of pants.
If your eyes aren’t attuned to hi-def images, well, I have the means for fixing them.
Even now, as I jab this into the keyboard, I’m looking at my fingernails and imagining how best to bite them. This is problematic because the plan, set into motion after Fat Tuesday, is to never chew them again. The means to do this? I’d ride on the coattails of the fervor surrounding Lent.
I’m not Catholic, so these 40 days and nights resonate differently for me, but what’s appealing–and almost convenient, in a way–is the mass exercise of self-control. It’s like there’s a quivering body of anguish and willpower, onto which you can easily toss your baggage. The baggage I chose, it occurred to me, needs to stay stowed even after mid-April. I mean, in my mind it’d be a crying shame to herald Easter by celebrating a resurrection of nail-biting, though this may simply be my antiquated leanings.
It’s going to be tough, let me tell you. I started the habit when I was five or six, such was the angst of suburbia, and any attempts to stop have been thwarted. Mum and dad, when I was in second grade, applied a kind of glorified hot sauce to dissuade eating my own hands, but unbeknownst to them I secretly enjoyed spicy foods. A college crush suggested I stop, one day during class, and that lasted until I got over her and hopped right back on the horse. Perhaps it’s time I began looking into support groups or, as a good alternative to sitting and talking in circles, dipping my fingertips in dog shit.