I was reading recently about a local gp’s observations of
the contents of residents’ recycling bins and the astonishing insight it gave
into our culture’s drinking habits.
While disturbed, yet not surprised by her revelation of what
goes on behind closed doors, it brought a relief from my own guilty pleasures
of old. And I’m not talking about my own overflowing recycling bin.
As I’ve mentioned previously, motherhood opens up a whole
new world – not only to the sleepless nights and endless feeding and washing
etc – but to the daily goings-on in your own neibourhood when one would
otherwise have been unawares at work.
The pace, compared to after-hours, is a whole lot slower –
the people, unlike the workers, haggard after an eight-hour day, racing home to
cook dinner, have a glass of wine and put their feet up, are friendly. Other
than the roll-your-eyes ‘Thank god it’s Friday’ relieved small-talk, that comes
out in a week’s worth of pent-up gush, interaction regularly happens.
And it’s at this slower pace that a stay-at-home mother has
the time to go for strolls up the street, inhale the fresh air, smell the roses
and get to know their neighbours. These include the the elderly - usually
on-hand to cluck at the contents of your stroller - and the fellow stay-at-home
mums, who greet each other on passing, while checking out the contents of each
other’s strollers. These parents will likely get to know each other better years
later when said contents end up friends in the same class.
Then there are the closed doors of the workers’ houses, the
residents of whom you are never likely to lay eyes on, until you re-join the
work force and come face-to-face with at the fish n chip shop on the way home.
Until then, with one’s over-active imagination in overdrive from mind-numbingly
mundane routines, one can only imagine what they are like.
And this is where the recycling bins come in. Dodging the
bins on a Thursday morning with a double-stroller whilst taking the same
well-trod route, it would be impossible not to, albeit slightly ashamedly, note
their fillings.
Thoughts like “Gosh that person enjoys a good tipple after
work”, or “Gee, they sure like their Coca Cola – I wonder if they know how bad
it is for them” flit through the mind before anyone can say “Big Brother is
Watching You”.
I’m sure, had I not lived at the end of a street, another
stroller-manoeuvring mother with nothing better to think about, happening upon my own recycling bin, might have noted the
couple of ‘Thank God It’s Friday’ WoodStock cans and concluded that: either a
boy racer lived within or, more correctly, a mother who doesn’t like beer,
having posted to Facebook on a Friday afternoon asking: “Is it too early to
crack a Woody?”
Long gone are the days where I have this luxury of voyeuristic
observation and long gone are the days where I feel the need to drain a Woody
to celebrate surviving the week. My own recycling bin is, in fact completely
boring – more of the yogurt pot and milk bottle variety. Apart from the odd
occasion where the family get together and the younger cousins and siblings
manage to fill up two bins-full, much to my amused chagrin on a Thursday morning
while carting the beer bottle (and odd Woodstock)-laden bins up the hill
undercover.
So when you’re discarding the remnants of your week at the
front gate, take note of what you are putting on show – and perhaps your
consumption for that matter - for it’s not Big Brother who is watching you –
it’s bored housewives, rubbish collectors and the family doctor, it would seem.
