Let me begin by relating a tale Gary told me after he returned from his parent’s yesterday. It seems the garbage disposer is not disposing of garbage at the in-laws. It runs, but doesn’t chop. Gary had a banana peel he wanted to dispose of, and his mom stopped him before he put it in the sink.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said ” I forgot. I’ll just throw it away.”
Wilma said, “No, don’t throw it away. Here’s how we do.” Then she threw the banana peel in the sink into a basket covering the garbage disposer, then she took the basket and emptied it into the trash. Then she ran the water, then she turned ON THE garbage disposer. When Gary pointed out all the obvious flaws in this process, she just shook her head and said, “That’s how we do it.”
Granted, she is almost eighty, and when a family has been disposing of the garbage a certain way for at least thirty years it might be hard to adjust. I thought of Wilma and the ritualistic processing of the intangible banana peel when I watched March of the Penguins last night.
We watched the penguins (nowhere near as cute as pandas) mate, lay eggs, mourn frozen eggs, march seventy miles, march back, and trade off baby penguins (still nowhere near as cute as baby pandas) and we were supposed to be awed by the resilience of the penguin spirit. And, by extensions, I guess, of the human spirit.
“Huh.” I said at the end. “That got an Academy Award nomination?”
I thought Gary had been caught up in the movie because he would bay like a mourning penguin over dead chicks. Instead Gary said “Yeah. Haven’t these people ever watched Nova?”
Then we started questioning why we didn’t fall in love with this movie. I pointed out that I knew that for every cute baby penguin flapping its wings in a triumphant victory wave there were 50 hours of unused footage of baby penguins being pooped on by Mr. Penguin. And we do think it’s sweet that Mr. and Mrs. Penguin make a heart shape with their heads because they are in love. But really, couldn’t that just be from a mutual desire to eat the babies?
We decided if we were penguins, we would wave goodbye to the other birds waddling seventy miles inland to Ice Station Penguin. “You go guys” we would call. “Have fun up there. We’ll hold down the fort here where the food is.”
“But don’t you want to lay eggs and protect them from predators and starve for three months?” they would honk.
“No” we’d honk back. “Have some extra eggs for us.” Then if they pressured us to go, we’d “accidentally” let the eggs roll off our feet, bellow, and sigh, “well, so much for this year. Time to head back to the food. Later.” We might show some affection for niece penguins.
Get those penguins some birth control. Maybe after a few generations the march urge would fade. Or would it be like Wilma: for generations, will S_____s still be disposing of food that is not really in an empty garbage disposer? I am so glad I am not stuck in a black-and-white penguin pattern.