Recycle

When I was growing up we did not have the option to recycle. I can remember learning about recycling, seeing landfills and what not, but no more than that. Everything went into the regular trash. It was not until I graduated from Auburn and moved to New York that I was introduced to the real deal: This bin is for plastic and this one for paper and this one for regular trash. It was like I went into over drive. For some reason it became very important to me that every thing that could be recycled, no matter how small, go into the appropriate container. Obsessive I know. Maybe I was just trying to make up for lost time. I don't know.
So anyway, Jonathan and I move back to Alabama and we lived in an apartment in Birmingham and guess what....no recycling. It bothered me to the point that I decided we would find a recycling center and just drive our stuff over every so often. To make a long story short we saved our papers and plastics until they were running over, set off to find a recycling center that J mapped out and do my dismay there was nothing there but a school. You would have thought that throwing all that trash away was going to kill me but we did what we had to do:)
So now we live in a house and we have our very own little blue container for recycling and they come and pick it up every week as usual. A few weeks ago on garbage day one of the neighbors came over inquiring about the trash (which was not rolled out to the street), telling me that the garbage truck was on the next street over and did I want him to pull the trash to the curb (this guy...heehee he cracks me up. He's a military man and each and every week he rolls everyone's trash can back to their house immediately after it has been emptied).
Me: "No, that's okay."
Him: "Do you not have any trash in it?!"
Me: thinking..."no"
Whether or not it is my neighbors business if I have any garbage to collect is not the point. If it makes him happy to command the trash cans of King Arthur Circle I'm okay with that. The point is that as he was walking back to his house I caught a glimpse of our blue recycle bin loaded up at the end of the drive...and the three cardboard boxes around it, each containing the contents of which the blue bin could not hold. So I stood there for a second thinking...in seven days, all of which we have been at home we have not filled up even ONE bag of regular trash.
Everyone has quirks. Is this a quirk? Maybe. Maybe I'm OCD but I don't think so. Maybe I'll follow behind my neighbor every Thursday knocking on doors asking each household why their recycling is not placed at the curb. Our own little fascist regime. Now THAT'S an idea.