How I became the Compost Girl
On Friday afternoon, I took on an act of environmental heroism. One of my bosses was going straight out of town that evening so she didn’t have time to dump the compost at home. My other boss was overburdened with her own small child, along with a big pile of recycling and laundry bags full of the children’s nap sheets and the dirty rags we use to wipe up their mess and the Lysol. My two remaining co-workers who both have cars didn’t think twice when my bosses said that this week’s compost would go into the trash. But not I.
“I’ll take it home,” I immediately volunteered.
“The other passengers might give you dirty looks though,” said Co-worker Two with car.
“They deserve it for massacring my ears with the hideous music blasting out of their headphones,” I replied smugly.
“Compost Girl,” said Co-worker One.
Both co-workers with cars started laughing until tears formed in their eyes.
On Friday afternoon, I took on an act of environmental heroism. One of my bosses was going straight out of town that evening so she didn’t have time to dump the compost at home. My other boss was overburdened with her own small child, along with a big pile of recycling and laundry bags full of the children’s nap sheets and the dirty rags we use to wipe up their mess and the Lysol. My two remaining co-workers who both have cars didn’t think twice when my bosses said that this week’s compost would go into the trash. But not I.
“I’ll take it home,” I immediately volunteered.
“On the bus?” said my laundry and child-burdened boss.
“Why not?” I asked.
“You’ll get kicked off,” said Co-Worker One with Car.
“No, I won’t. Metro Transit owes me big time.” I explained
that I carry around a carefully documented list of all the days that Metro
Transit has made me wait excessively in horrible Halifax weather, and the three
and a half times they made me late despite my unfailing punctuality at the bus
stop. When I die, I will bill Metro Transit for the time and misery they cost
me and all the money will go to vegetarian party sandwiches at my funeral.
Metro Transit dare not say anything about the compost.“The other passengers might give you dirty looks though,” said Co-worker Two with car.
“They deserve it for massacring my ears with the hideous music blasting out of their headphones,” I replied smugly.
“Well, that’s very noble of you,” said Co-worker One with
Car, smirking.
“Yah, you’re like a superhero,” said Co-worker Two.“Compost Girl,” said Co-worker One.
Both co-workers with cars started laughing until tears formed in their eyes.
“I don’t see what’s so funny,” I said. “I’m just taking one
for the environment. I’m an environmentalist.”
“Can you please write a blogpost about this, Compost Girl?”
said Co-worker One. “I mean, if you had a blog."
Co-worker One is the only one who occasionally reads my blog.
My bosses don’t know about it because my blog is so edgy and controversial that
it would definitely get me fired. Add the Adventures of Compost Girl
to the existing heaps of menstruation,
vibrators
and potty
training theories and this blog will only get edgier.
I poured the mountains of decomposing napkins, lasagna,
Moroccan bean soup, mediocre hummus and whole grain crackers into triple
layered Sobey’s bags. There were three bags in all. I lugged the bags down the
hill to my bus stop on the Bedford Highway. The bus was nearly empty, but a
construction worker and Muslim couple were sitting at the back where I sat
down. Nobody looked up when I sat down and as the ripening odours wafted
through the back of the bus, the couple continued their faint dialogue and the
construction worker kept flipping through his Metro newspaper. The bus driver
let me off at the corner of Robie and University Avenue. I trudged the
two kilometres home in Halifax’s standard un-Christmasy foggy drizzle. As I
walked, the plastic bag handles dug into my palms and left red creases. After I
dumped the compost into the green bin in our driveway, I smelled my hands. They
smelled like vomit, but it was nothing a little biodegradable dish soap
couldn’t handle.
The End.
Notes from 2016: I feel like I did this a second time. On
the bus ride home, I'd somehow switched my phone into accessibility mode. I
fumbled frantically to try to get Siri to stop yattering away at me. My bus
stop came and Siri was still relentlessly dictating all my options which was extremely discombobulating. After I got off the bus, I decided to go the the Rogers store on the
corner of Spring Garden Road to see if they could fix it. It wasn't until I'd
gotten the customer service people to adjust my settings and finally silence
Siri when I realized I'd completely forgotten about the two bags of compost. I
must have left them on the floor of the bus. That day marked my last attempts at environmental heroism.
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