How's This For Perspective?

A few years ago, a homeless guy began cruising my street every Tuesday morning, digging through trash left out for pick-up. One morning, around 4 AM, I watched this guy from my window remove nearly all my trash from the bucket in front of my house, looking for cans (and probably other things I don't want to know about). He was kind enough to put about half the trash back into the bucket.

So I stopped putting redeemable cans in my trash, and he eventually stopped going through it.

Cut to yesterday, and my garage was overflowing with bags full of soda cans. Obviously I cared less about returning those cans for a nickel a pop and more about sticking it to a rude homeless man and his jangly shopping cart.

But I want to clean my garage soon, so Sarah and I piled all those nasty-sticky bags into my truck and her jeep, and took a trip to the redemption center...


[ my sad-faced truck piled high ]

...where those unlucky enough to be working undoubtedly cursed our cracker asses for the rest of the day.

Why? Because we walked away with $157.25. Let me explain.

Lately I've been working at living a healthier life, cutting out soda, going to the gym, eating better, and it's been working. Hell, after we returned those cans I went out and spent $500 on a Specialized Crosstrail mountain bike and an additional few hundred on accessories, like a big dorky-looking helmet. This is serious business, and returning all those soda cans put things into a much clearer perspective.

Do you know how many cans of soda you have to return to get $157.25? Oh, just 3,145.

THREE THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED FORTY-FIVE!

And that's only what we saved at home; we obviously drank more than that. Sadly, most of it was mine, probably about 85–90%. That's scary when put in that kind of perspective. I know this number is from a couple years' worth of stuff, but I can't even fathom the fact that I drank that much soda. Chemicals, really. Poison, practically.

I'm glad I crave water when thirsty these days.