Laughing at Myself

I’m learning to not take myself too seriously. When I was young, I cared too much about what I thought other people were thinking of me, was too concerned with looking good in the moment and hoped to appear right more than I wanted to good. I missed out on a lot not being able to laugh at myself.

I received another lesson in this recently after we moved into our new home. We have entirely too much junk so moving required about four hundred and seventeen thousand moving boxes from Home Depot. We had so many boxes that I’m pretty sure at some point we were just moving in boxes filled with more boxes. And those suckers aren’t cheap either, so we had what probably amounted to at least one of the kids’ college funds invested into all that cardboard. Because of the financial outlay, I didn’t want to waste them after we had moved in and was able to give some of them to a friend who moved the next weekend, but we still had plenty left over and recycling was the next best option.

So, there I am in the garage, breaking down boxes flat, struggling to fit as many as I could into the recycling bin and trying to strategize the most efficient use of space. I figured I might try rolling the flattened boxes because, hey, rolling clothes is supposed to maximize luggage space, right? Does that work for boxes too? Who knows, it’s not like they taught us this stuff in college.

As it turns out, you can’t really roll those boxes too well because they make them super rigid and probably bulletproof up to small caliber handgun rounds (which makes sense, because you wouldn’t want to accidentally shoot through a box of pillows if you were using one as a target backstop while venting some moving day frustrations). So that left me with attempting cardboard origami as I struggled to bend and twist these boxes to fit the shapes of the cracks and crevices still open within the already nearly full recycling bin. The fuller the bin became; the more effort that was required to jam a new box into quickly vanishing empty spaces. As I continued this mission, I slowly started accumulating bloody knuckles and scuffed up forearms from crumpled boxes that didn’t quite fit in their intended space, causing my hands to slip off and slam into the boxes already firmly entrenched in the bin. These scraps of cardboard were quite literally beating me up. At one point, I had a box folded into quarters, then I tried to bend the quartered box in half lengthwise. There was so much tension in the cardboard as I tried to force it into its new home that as one side popped out of its place, it smacked me right in the face.

It was at this point my son entered the garage, probably wondering where all the yelling was coming from. There I am, dirty, sweaty and bleeding, and my son looks at me, looks at the boxes and then looks back at me and says, “uh dad, that can’t go in there like that.” I’m thinking he’s undermining my box bending skills, so I tell him in my best John Wayne voice, “don’t worry pilgrim, I’ll make it fit.” He ignores my swagger and responds with, “no, I mean it can’t go in the recycling like that. It’s not clean. There’s food on it.”

Apparently, a pizza box had found its way in with the moving boxes. I then clarified with my judgmental eight-year-old, “so you want me to clean the trash before I throw it away?” As he nods his head, I realize I am starting to really question the amount of care and concern I have for the environment anyway. “Yeah,” he says, still nodding condescendingly, “it can’t be all messy or have food on it or the recycling place won’t take it.”  I look him dead in dead in the eyes and I think to myself, “really, so that’s how it’s gonna be kid? That’s how we are gonna play this?” But it’s so ridiculous I can’t even get defensive. I’m out in the garage washing garbage. What are you doing with your life? And by the way, where do the recycling people get off being so picky and particular? For people who sort through refuse day, they sure seem pretentious.

It’s at this point I realize where I stand in life. I've just finished fighting and wrestling trash, which was bad enough, but now I'm cleaning it. I don't even collect it and sort it like the hot shots at the recycling place. Apparently, that kind of sophisticated work is above my pay grade. And it's not like I am even organizing garbage. And that’s what crazy people do! You’ve probably even seen some homeless guy – with his head wrapped in tin foil so the robots can’t read his thoughts – organizing refuse and stacking garbage into piles, right? This is worse than that. I'm sitting here beat up from combat recycling and now I am expected to give this box a bath? I look at my son and there's pain in his eyes as we both realize, this is what it's come to: I'm almost 40 years old, married with five kids, I have a degree in biochemistry, run a successful business, and what am I doing at 8:00 at night? I'm scrubbing trash.

In all of this, I can only laugh at myself. I am just a guy who is undeservedly blessed. Blessed to be able to move into that house. Blessed to have a wife who will still love me after failing recycling. Blessed to have kids who will still look up to me after I got my butt kicked by a bunch of cardboard. Blessed to have a team at work who will still (hopefully) respect me after reading this. Blessed to have friends who probably won’t read this or ever hear this story, and thus still want to remain friends. Blessed to be intentional and serious about life, but to not take myself too seriously. Very, very blessed.

PS – I never did get many of those boxes to fit so I’ll do this all over again before the next recycling day.