Chain Reaction

Everynow and then my own worries and insecurities tickle my fancy, especially when circumstances allow me to see their universality.

Wednesday is garbage collection day in my part of Knoxville.  This past week we had a holiday on Monday, and, since there was no garbage pickup on that day, everyone's garbage pickup was pushed back a day.  I think this is pretty typical, although perhaps the specifics may vary.  In Hyde Park there were six holidays a year that there was no garbage pickup and they corresponded to the major holidays:  New Years Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, and Christmas Day.  In Knoxville there are also six holidays on which there is no garbage pickup but Memorial Day has been switched out for Martin Luther King day.  This confused me when I moved here, because in my all-too-human way, I assumed my previous neighborhood's garbage collection schedule was standard.  

Tuesday night, I knew, at least in my head, that I did not have to put out my garbage.  But I went outside and looked up and down the street before going to bed, just to be sure.  Most of my neighbors put their garbage out between 6 and 7 the night before garbage collection.  The curb was clear.  But I couldn't settle down so I got on the internet and checked the garbage collection schedule, just to be certain.  Yes, indeed, garbage collection would be delayed until Thursday. I was finally able to relax and go to sleep.

Wednesday morning I took my early morning walk around the neighborhood at 6:30.  I saw maybe one garbage can.  Habits are hard to break after all; look at how much I fretted over this very same issue. Then at 7:30 I left for an early morning  exercise class I wanted to try.  Still only one garbage can.

When I came home, close to 9:30.  I drove into my neighborhood and was greeted with the sight of garbage cans lined up by the side of the road at every house.  Part of me was saying "there's no garbage collection today" and another part of me was saying "oh no! I didn't put my garbage can out! Perhaps I got my holidays confused".  Relief.  My can was out also, the person who helps me with cleaning had put it out. And then, I couldn't help but laugh, mostly at myself.  I could see what happened.  We all "know" that there is no garbage pickup, but we all worry that we will be wrong.  We are a neighborhood that is predominantly highly educated, predominantly successful in the ways of the world, and yet we all worry that we are the odd person out, that our neighbors know something we don't.

I could imagine the process in my head. Someone saw their neighbor's can out and thought "I forgot my garbage can" and put theirs out.  Then the next person did the same.  At some point there were enough cans out that everyone put their can out, whether they thought about it or not, because no one wants to be the one person in the neighborhood who was wrong, because thinking "they" know something "we" don't is our default setting.  And I probably would have dragged my can out myself, just so that my house would not stand out in the crowd.  The first thing I did when I got in the house was to recheck the waste management website, just to be sure there would be no garbage collection. Then I left the can out at the curb until the next morning anyway.  I chose to blend in.

The whole situtation makes me smile.  The process will probably be repeated following the next Monday holiday.  And that too makes me smile, not in laughter, but in compassion.  We humans, filled as we as we are with doubts and insecurities, and occasionally just unthinking moments of lemming-like behavior, we are so much more alike than we are different.  How can one not be filled with compassion?