March 2019

You are one, the first number that is the beginning of       Arithmetic and geometry’s starting point–Solomon ibn Garibol I spoke to him last… Read More »Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: October 27, 2018

by Sinthop Katawanij

The end of a meal was our least favorite and for reasons other than the ones you might think–the moment when we’d all have to stand in judgment and decide which recycling bin to choose for our garbage. Neither Karen or I expected a hand to reach out from the slush pile and grab us, but still, it was unnerving. Lady and the Tiger stuff.

But Tammy never hesitated. She had recycling down pat. The kind of person who knew exactly in which green, blue, red, or gray bin to chuck her left-overs while the rest of us warily approached each designated station before leaving the cafeteria.  She tossed her coffee cups and soda cans with abandon, deposited her leftover dinner into each appropriate bin creating an avalanche of French fries as they met their bonded fate together with ketchup; the slide of paper plates, yogurt containers, Styrofoam cups, napkins rushing to meet their unmaker; beans, taco chips, and the dribbling of chef salad toward a different tributary. It happened so quickly. Who could keep track?

But Fanny was a girl who knew her stuff. A recycling monitor throughout middle school, she had attended a summer camp where campers pitched different items into their respective bins from 10 yards back. At  summer’s end, she returned home with a certificate. But in all other regards, Fanny had developed into a normal eighteen-year-old. She wore jeans with the correct number of rips and tears, had sports T-shirts that she’d inherited from two drop-dead gorgeous older brothers, and said disparaging things about her parents that any one of us would have loved to have traded for our own.

Karen and I relied on her expertise as we finished dinner and lined up with our trays in hand before we began the trek to our evening college classes. Fanny relieved our misery. She said, “Here, let me help you,” and dispensed with our refuse. We were grateful. But if ever she got sick, or on one occasion had broken her arm, immovable and useless in a plaster cast, we ordered soup and avoided the need to recycle altogether. Instead, we stacked our bowls near the kitchen and carried away any napkins deep inside our purses. We had to do something with the cutlery. On those rare occasions, she stood behind us and told us where to put them. “There! There! Not there!” Sort of a nostalgic Gertrude Stein moment.

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