Why is the Indian Still Crying?

"And in honor of Bobbi Klein, we will now have the Bobbi Klein Memorial Recycling Program," proudly proclaimed the Owner of the company.

I don't make this shit up, my imagination does not stretch as far as reality.

Bobbi Klein was a coworker who crept slowly into her untimely death. I knew the following things about her:

She loved her Nat Sherman MCDs. She set up a wicker chair outside in a little nook by the transformers where she and others took turns for private, uninterrupted smoke time. As the others, she extinguished her life support butts into the decades old gallon can of Folgers, filled with ancient, water-logged butts of varying brands.

She drove an early nineties Ford Probe bearing a personalized license plate that indicated to any 12-stepper that she was in at least one program. EZDUZIT. Don’t get it? Good.

She loved to shop. Loved collecting shit. Couldn’t control it.

Her desk was positioned in a corner, but it felt and sounded like it was in the center of the room.

She spoke many languages LOUDLY over the phone. This made everyone laugh and ponder such worldliness.

She was lovely and hilarious, and an extremely talented actress in her time.

Her poodle was her world.

And she recycled.

As if her life weren’t busy enough, she took it upon herself to recycle as much as she could of the white paper trash our office generated. She set up a large, blue, wheelie bin in the hall for such a purpose, in addition to supplying the office with the smaller blue recycling bins that fit neatly under desks. At the end of each week, she would take her tired ass around the office to gather up the waste paper, she’d wheel out the big bin and load her car with our trash, then take it home, cram it all in her own recycling bins, and you know the drill.

This was her deal.

When she left the office on disability, the big blue wheelie bin disappeared, the recycling ended, and we began the practice of hanging dolphin carcasses from six pack rings, along the hallways and in every office, as well as in the break room. We started using polar bear paws as ashtrays, we’d have water balloon wars using balloons filled with antifreeze, and my favorite, skeet shooting using actual pigeons.

I don’t know much of her life after she left the office. I don’t know if anyone told her that we all got busy reenacting our own living version of the Garden of Earthly Delights. She rested, sold the bulk of her things, and in a space of time much longer than what her doctor predicted, she deteriorated and died.

A few months ago, the owner, a good friend of Bobbi’s gathered all of the employees to make the sad announcement of her passing. He told us with head hung low. And in honor of her life, we are now recycling.


*****

Dawn, Sam, and another former Dolphin Hunter yelled at me and berated me when they caught me casually throwing away paper, lots of paper into a regular black trash can.

"Is that how you are? What the hell are you doing? We recycle here!" Barked one or more of the good witches, I can't remember, their horrified faces all blended together as one swirling hallucination. I wasn't in the mood for a fight, so I plucked my volumes of paper from my trash can, coffee drips included, and recycled just like a good earth lover.

I have not ever followed the new recycling program rules. When no one is looking, I continue to use the blue bins as if they were trash cans, and the trash cans as if they were blue bins.

I don't hate the earth and the children of the future, I love penguins and dragonflies. Just hear me out.

So when Sam and Dawn chided me again last week for throwing my ding dong leftovers in the blue recycling bin, I told them to talk to Jerry.

Sam came back barely able to breathe, laughing so hard that he could not tell the story without an inhaler.

"Jerry just told me that he dumps all of the recycling in the DUMPSTER! He was told to do that until they signed us up for an actual recycling program! And they haven't done a thing about it since we started. The Bobbi Klein Memorial Recycling Program is the same as trash."

No shit. You should team up with M. Knight Shymalan to create his next plot twist.

We have three windows that I peer out of all day, dreaming of my time in Eden, before all of this pesky knowledge broke out and we all realized that we were NAKED and therefore we'd have to work to cover our stinky parts with designer jeans and handsome coats from the Banana Republic Heritage Collection. On one such peer-out, I saw Jerry hoist the contents of the big blue wheelie bin over his shoulder and into the dumpster. I did not gasp and puke at the big reveal a la the Crying Game, I just rolled my eyes and blessed the dead.

And that's why the Indian is still crying.