Trash Mountain

Calling what we have in my suite Trash Mountain is misleading.  It's more like Trash Tower, coming closer and closer to reaching heights the proportion of Babel.  But when it's finally felled by a higher power (gravity, God, the secular hand of external force, for example), it will end with factions, rather than multiple languages.

In one camp will be the people who take out the garbage diligently while planning how exactly to execute a passive aggressive retaliation.  In another camp will be the environmentalists, raising their eyebrows, hands on hips, matter-of-factly stating that if people just recycled their bottles instead of putting them in the garbage, took one minute showers and stopped releasing balloons into the atmosphere to rain down and choke baby penguins, all problems would be eliminated, including the garbage.  Finally, there will be those who slink away in silence.

We have a habit in my suite of ten girls of, upon find the garbage can full, just stacking our yogurt carton and still-folded box on top of it, resting the lid of the can so that it sits higher and higher from the can, creating an appealing layer of visible garbage between them.  People can't be bothered to take the garbage down four flights of stairs just because they happened to be the one to have garbage when the can was full.  The only solution is to pack down the garbage and cram new things in.

The only problem with this otherwise excellent avoidance tactic is that when someone finally decides to be the good Samaritan, they can't get the garbage out.  It's a two person job.  Someone holds the can while the other tugs furiously, jerking the can off the floor occasionally, despite the spotter's efforts.  The garbage rises up teasingly before sinking back in, wedged.

As my suitemate so eloquently put it at the end of today's latest run-in, "I feel like I just gave birth...to a tower of garbage."

technorati tags:college, trash, garbage, roommates, birth