The Trash Bag Conundrum

...
At home we are dealing with a 16 year-old who is convinced she is an adult and can now, even with two years of high school left, go out into the world and make it on her own. After all, she can earn her own money having now held a minimum wage job for three whole months. There’s simply no convincing her that it’s all a bit more complicated (and expensive) than simply getting her own place. I’ll spare you all the gory details but let’s just say this is a HUGE point of contention right now in Casa de Eleventh Hour.

Anyway, this reminds me of a small bit if wisdom I gleaned from my early adulthood that I have never forgotten. I was about 25 and working at a radio station in Northern Illinois. The station also liked to exploit, er, hire high school and college kids to run the automated programming after hours and on weekends. One of these kids was a rosy-cheeked boy named Darrin. He had been with the station for a year or so when he finally moved out of his parent’s house and got a place of his own. Not long after that day, he came into the station, sat across from me and sighed. He told me that living on his own was harder than he thought and in a very frustrated tone said, “You have to buy all these things you never think of. Like trash bags. Who ever thinks of having to buy TRASH BAGS!”

I don’t know why I’ve never forgotten that except it seemed to sum-up perfectly the nickel and diming life uses to sandblast your youthful dreams. Hell, at the time Darrin was experiencing his trash bag shock, I was enjoying the convenience of even having a trash CAN for the first time since I finally and completely struck out on my own a year or two earlier. When I got my first post-college (furnished) apartment I decided an actual trash can was a luxury and initially only used paper grocery sacks. At some point, I felt I had a extra few dollars for an actual trash can (and the required trash bags) and moved up in the waste disposal world. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about affording trash cans anymore but the lessons of starting out in life are going to stick with me forever. Too bad those experiences have no credibility at home these days.