Public Waste

I’ve lived in this neighbourhood for nearly ten years now.  Not alone, of course;  I have the requisite wife with her weekly manicure appointments, and the requisite dog with her poufy tail, and the requisite two point four children.  Two of the children are easy to find.  They each have a bedroom on either side of our bedroom, one pink, one blue, in day-glo shades that would burn out your eyes if you stared too long at the walls.  As for the other four tenths, he’s not so easy to find – at least not if you’re looking for him.  But he pops up in odd ways.  He’s there in the vestiges of a teen-aged immaturity.  He’s there in a spate of disappointed hopes, the sense, as we survey the lovely homes above and below us, that it’ll never get any better than this.  He’s there, too, in the pressure to strut, to buy bigger toys, to program our kids with lessons and play groups and sports teams until our days are one long breathless sprint.  Point four.

Read the rest of this entry »