“No,” I said to my wife. “They can’t do that again. It will completely mess us up.”
She knew I was correct. When it first occurred seven years ago, I lamented about the problem in this column, and now it was happening again: The city was changing the pickup day for recycling. It was going from Monday to Tuesday. Every OTHER Tuesday. It didn’t take long for us to get confused.
Is this the day we put out the recycling?” I asked Mary Ellen.
“I think it’s the right day. It may not be the right week.”
“We put it out last week, but they didn’t pick it up, so it must be this week.”
“But I think we put it out too late and we simply missed the truck,” said Mary Ellen. “Well, does anyone else have their recycle bin out?”
“Yes, Paul has his out,” I said.
“You can’t go by him. Paul still puts it out every Monday. He didn’t get the memo. He’s the cause of the confusion every week.”
“Wait, Eric is putting his out now. I’m going to put ours out, too.”
Eric called to me as I wheeled our recycling dumpsters out of the garage. “Dick, is this the correct Monday for the recycling?”
“No, it’s Tuesday since they made the change. But now I see Paul putting his out. Paul is a retired fireman. He knows how to put things out.”
“Paul, are you sure this is the week for recycling?”
“I don’t think it is, Dick, but I saw you guys putting yours out, and I figured you must know what you’re doing.”
Suddenly, about three garage doors opened and Maurizio, Susan and Dave all put their recycling containers at the curb. The next thing we knew, all the neighbors had their yellow-lidded receptacles in their driveways.
Mary Ellen and I began to think about this. “If this is the wrong week, everyone will blame us,” she said. “But I think we should blame it on Paul.”
We decided not to mess with the situation. We knew we had the correct day. But was it the right week? Tuesday at about 4 p.m. the bins were still sitting untouched, so I watched everyone haul their recyclables back into their garages. There were a lot of people talking trash about the Wolfsies.
The next morning was Wednesday and about 11 a.m. I headed outside to the mailbox. Just as I was putting the red flag up, Rays Recycling came from around the corner. “NO, NO!” I screamed. “Not on a Wednesday.” Then I remembered that Monday was a holiday, so everything was delayed a day.
I dragged my bin to the curb. The huge arms extended from the sides of the truck, clutching the container and emptying the contents.
I felt guilty that I had messed up everyone on the block, so I organized a neighborhood meeting the next day. We created a recycling schedule for the next 20 years and emailed the spreadsheet with detailed information about what you should recycle and what you shouldn’t…and we added a friendly reminder to all about which side of the bin should point toward the street.
The whole thing was educational, but I agree with Kermit the Frog. It’s not easy being green.
