Dump consciousness pervades

Recycling center

Dump consciousness? What the heck is that?

The short answer to your question is that dump consciousness generally overtakes me when I go to, of all places, yep, you guessed it, the dump. In its most formal context, the dump is also known as the County Recycling Center. No one I know calls it that. It’s just the… dump.

The dump’s particulars are as follows: a, sometimes odiferous, tennis court-sized fenced in area, off the beaten track, but nonetheless, nearby. The county staffs it six days a week, with a day of rest on Sunday for the staff and all of us DIY-ers. A welcoming place which opens its arms to those of us with too little, or too much, garbage and recycling to pay for home pick-up on a weekly basis. (I’m cheap.)

OK, now you have the dump’s concrete particulars My curious state of dump consciousness, which generally overtakes me when I drive through its gates, is less explicable. Much less.

I mean, who gets happy about putting several (or more), usually quite odiferous, plastic bags of garbage in the car and rumbling down the back roads to said dump? Me! It certainly isn’t the garbage; I can tell you that.

(She’s really going to say it.) As I line-up behind other cars to divest myself of garbage and recyclables, something comes over me. It’s Communiteeeee! I’m suddenly just gabbing away with the men (mostly) who staff the dump. I really, really appreciate what they do, including, occasionally, helping me, as well as others, unload. I want them to know they are valued!

My Chatty Cathy modality (a pull-string talking doll popular in the early 1960s) just pops out. Yeah, often just idle chatter, but it’s also a way of my saying “I see and acknowledge you.” No matter what their job is, who the heck doesn’t like being seen and acknowledged?

Granted, my Chatty Cathy persona is not just limited to those who staff the dump. No way. I’ve usually entered a positive fugue at that point and am just bubbling over with Chatty Cathy-ness.

A man with a white ponytail parked in front of me, last week. He was wearing shorts in the early afternoon of a morning that had been in the 30s. I commented that he was brave for donning shorts today He, however, apologized for not wearing his usual Hawaiian shirt. I told him he was forgiven.

Idle chatter, all ‘round? A waste of time? No way! Building Communiteeeee!

“Casual connections in the course of daily life can give people a feeling that they belong to a community, a basic human need.” ‘Tis the wellspring of dump consciousness.

Dump consciousness pervades outside the environs of the real dump, too. You need not be a Chatty Cathy to build Communitteeee! That’s simply my way. What’s yours?