This one is dedicated to my wife, Megan, one of the earth’s greatest champions.

Foreword: Several weeks ago, a bird built a nest on the wreath my wife and I keep on our front door, then laid five eggs. After what must be hundreds of hours of incubation, we now have a tiny baby bird living on our door with a few brother and sister hatchlings to come. Why the mother bird decided to nest on our door, rather than the Japanese Maple nine feet away, I do not know. Perhaps she somehow knew Megan would go to the end of the earth and back to guard these children. Perhaps, in knowing that, she realized that such a bold move would effectively annex my front porch area and in phase two of the plan, she will invite her bird army to help defend and maintain those spoils. We shall see. In any case, it’s well-timed as it has me thinking about earth day and the passion with which individuals like Megan (though none are truly the same as she) fight to preserve the natural resources we take for granted.

Years ago, I wrote a story which, to a degree, was about a vengeful Mother Earth planning to eradicate humankind to preserve the planet. When I see someone littering, I always have the thought, “You know what?… She’s not wrong.”

So, let’s talk about littering. A scientific study, undertaken by actual scientists at some point, somewhere, maybe, concludes that if you portray yourself as a member of the group you’re trying to reach (even if insincerely), your message can be up to 80% more impactful, maybe. So here goes…

What are we even doing? Why are we like this? There’s a trash can right there. That’s really at the core of any point I try to make henceforth: there’s always a trash can right there. It may not be in sight right now, but, overwhelmingly, the chances are that we will encounter one in a few minutes. Why can’t we just wait? Why can’t we just clutch that parcel of garbage for a few more minutes, then dispose of it properly. I guess there’s something cathartic about just letting go of a burden. It’s a microcosm of existence itself, a metaphor for mental health awareness. After all, don’t we all need to just let go of the things which cause us anxiety sometimes? It can be a beautiful, purifying moment of peace to just hold that Chick-Fil-A sandwich wrapper out of the window of that moving car and just watch it frantically flutter in the wind before releasing it into the heavens and letting it catch that gusting breeze to eventuality. Where might it end up? Anywhere – we’ll never know.

No wait, we know – on the ground. It ends up on the ground. And wait… we walk on the ground, and come to think of it, there’s some ground in my very own neighborhood. And there’s ground in my mom’s neighborhood too. Hold on a damned minute!… There’s ground everywhere! And there’s like… water and stuff. And I’ve seen trash on the ground near my house and my friends’ houses. There’s a bunch of junk in the water too – I saw that on TV. Have we just been throwing garbage all over our own stuff all this time like goddamned toddlers?

I think we need to do better. It’s not like they’re asking us to recycle. That’s way too taxing and confusing for us. I mean, I don’t know how they can expect us to take all of those steps of thinking about what something is made of then tossing it into the appropriate receptacle labeled with a picture of the very thing we’re throwing away. I’m not a waste management engineer. Get out of here with that bullshit. But, maybe I could just kinda tuck that trash away for a few minutes instead for throwing it on the ground. Worst case, I’ll find it in my pocket when I get home and just throw it away then. Come to think of it, I don’t just throw garbage on the floor of my home. Why am I doing it outside of my home? Unless we are doing that… Are we just throwing garbage on the floors of our homes? If we are doing that then, honestly, we need to start with that issue first. I mean, it’s Earth Day and everything, and I mean no disrespect to the planet but we have to fix some stuff at home first if we’re going from room to room, wading through garbage. In that case, maybe the focus needs to be on not being sociopaths anymore and helping the planet in that regard. But I digress.

Hmm… what else? Oh, cigarettes. We’re not smoking those as much anymore, and if we are, we really should stop altogether. But that’s a different soapbox. What I want to wrap my head around is why we think it’s cool to finish a cigarette and just flick that motherfucker somewhere indiscriminately. I think maybe we rationalized it this way:

“It’s just a tiny little cigarette. It’s so very small that one barely even notices it. Plus, it was just on fire so I don’t want to throw it in the trash and start a larger fire. I’m littering this cig for the good of humanity and animality and plantmanity. Plus, it’s just tobacco and paper (and a few other things). It’s just going to biodegrade and fortify the earth’s soils. Boom, there you go. Happy Earth Day!”

Here’s the reality though: We know that it’s not just one little cigarette. I know it and you know it. We have a problem. We measure our intake in packs and there’s millions of us smoking these packs and just launching the butts all over the place. It’s not all of us, but enough for it to be an issue. Also, the fact that it was on fire is not an excuse to throw it on the ground. We set the fire! It’s our fault there was a fire in the first place. It didn’t just spontaneously come aflame – we did that. So, it’s on us to properly put out and dispose of the fire we started. Plus, we’ve started SO MANY larger fires by not properly disposing of cigarettes. Lastly, there’s plastic fibers in those filters. That “other stuff” we mentioned in addition to the tobacco and paper – yeah, that’s plastic, and it’s just going to sit around on the ground until someone cleans up after us.

A poll of experts that I conducted and definitely did not make up just now, revealed that most consider the act of littering punishable by some combination of heavy fines, prison, and/or bludgeoning. One noted, “I want everyone who litters to go to jail.”

Luckily for us, the government disagrees but that brutal honestly touched me. So much so that I’m honoring the earth today by making a decree:

Today, I shall not besprinkle my planet with my lazily discarded shit. I will consider the grounds upon which I’ve littered in the past – the grounds of my mother, of my neighbors and friends. I will consider the waters and all the crap already therein. I will set no tiny fires, nor discard said fire irresponsibly under false pretenses. Today I will be a champion.

Happy Earth Day!