Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [85]
rant behavior in regard to food, trying to determine how in the world this kin of mine ever got off on the wrong foot by not liking ice cream. Can they get government help for a condition like this?
I remember enough old Art Linkletter shows to know that kids ask a lot of cute questions, but I was unprepared for those Justin asked.
During a long drive over country roads to the grocery store, the sun shone in his eyes. I had a baseball cap with a long peak on it in back of the car and I suggested he put it on. First, he put it on straight but the sun was still hitting his face so directly that he pulled the cap down over his eyes and was looking through the woven fibers of the dark blue material.
“Hey, Granddad!” he said suddenly. Even though there were only two of us in the car, it took me a minute to realize he meant me.
“What’s all these colors?” he asked. “I see all colors. What makes all the colors, Granddad?”
I knew instantly I was about to fail my first quiz as a grandfather. I know that the light from the sun contains every color in the spectrum and I know that under certain circumstances it’s possible to bend light beams so that the colors break down and separate. The process is called refraction. I know that but I can’t explain it.
I can’t figure out how Justin learned how to be a grandchild faster than I learned how to be a grandfather.
Simple Pleasures
A Trip to the Dump
T he President says this country is in desperate need of a moral revival. He isn’t the first one to say it, either. Almost anyone who says anything has been saying it for years. The trouble is, no one knows how to revive us morally.
I have a simple idea that might just do the trick. I say we should all take our own garbage to the dump. Every able-bodied person in the country would set aside an hour twice a week to dispose of trash and garbage. There would be no exceptions. The President would pack up whatever waste was produced in the private rooms of the White House and take it to the dump just like the rest of us. A President should keep in touch with reality, too.
Going to the dump is a real and exhilarating experience. It is both satisfying and educational. It makes you acutely aware of what you have used in your home and what you have wasted. There’s no faking it with garbage.
In a family, dump duty would be divided up. The kids would take their turns going to the dump with the adults. A kid can get to be voting age without knowing that the wastebasket or the garbage pail isn’t the end of the line if he or she has never been to the dump. Children
A Trip to the Dump 185
too young to drive would, of course, be accompanied by an adult to the dump.
The first thing you realize when you go to the dump is that we should be a lot more careful in separating what professional garbage collectors call “wet garbage” and just trash. All garbage is not the same. Trash is cans, bottles, papers, cardboard boxes and broken electrical appliances. “Wet garbage” comes from the kitchen.
Next, you have to get over that natural feeling of revulsion that garbage tends to induce. Keep in mind that coffee grounds, watermelon rinds, potato peels and corncobs were not revolting before we made them what they are today and mixed them together in our garbage pail. Think of them separately and in their original state and make a little game of breaking down the odor into its component parts.
It is possible to be overcome by a sense of your place in history at the dump. You are, at that moment, a part of the future of the universe. You are helping to rearrange the planet Earth. Man has always considered himself separate from Nature but a trip to the garbage dump can make him aware that he is not. In the millions and millions of years Earth has existed, there have been constant changes taking place. You probably live in a city that was once a lake or an ocean. The mountains you see may have had their cliffs sheared clean by a glacier when it moved relentlessly through your area an eon ago, dropping rich,