What a Waste

I keep a waste paper basket by my desk. I’m not sure why I call it a basket. It’s more like a can. It is a can. It’s a waste paper can. While I do toss waste paper into it, I also deposit most non-food type waste into it, too, like expired pens, pieces of broken toys, errant staples, cracked vials, tar, fine china and, of course, non-edible parts of park benches. The majority of its transitory load is waste paper. So, it will remain named a waste paper can, because waste paper et al can sounds cumbersome.

I crinkle each slice of waste paper in a ball, sometimes boisterously, other times with the lackadaisical effort of a sleepy child, and heave it into the metallic refuse purgatory where it waits until enough waste paper (et al) accumulates to spark my domestic tending mode when I empty it into the recycle bin. It resides there until its eventual delivery to the curb to be taken somewhere out of thought by the big, mean recycling truck driver.

It’s no small feat, this heaving of crinkled, useless, dried pulp. My waste paper can sits behind me, to the right, partially obscured by a bookcase. An accurate shot takes guile and cunning and a masterful reverse, no-look hook shot. Kareem Abdul Jabbar would chortle with envy if he could see the ease in which I fling the waste. Most of the crinkled balls end up on the floor. I put them right back up with a fade away jumper while falling backward over the couch. On my way back to the desk, I retrieve the paper from the floor after the second shot and place it carefully into the can. Sometimes, the rim of the can gets in the way and the paper falls back to the floor. The waste paper is not an easily tamed beast.

Oh, what a waste, that waste paper. I have no other use for it.