Waste. Want? Not.

26th June 2007

Spend any amount of time during the summer in New York City and you’ll encounter:
1) lots of dogs
2) ridiculous lines streaming out of gelato shops, and
3) garbage.

If there’s one thing I don’t miss about living in the “city” it’s the garbage. The sweet, summertime stench of good old New York City garbage (or gah-bage as they might say in Brooklyn).

But this past weekend, when I took my son to visit a friend and her new baby, I was somehow inextricably drawn to the gah-bage. Something I saw out of the corner of my eye caused me to jaywalk the intersection of 87th and Broadway and stand not less than three feet away from my mortal enemy. The cause? This:

A very gently used exersaucer marked for execution.

I was at first amused. Of course, only in New York City would someone think to throw away a perfectly useable exersaucer. And then I was horrified. How could someone throw out the “how the hell I managed to shower today contraption”? It just didn’t seem right.

But there wasn’t anything I could do immediately. I mean, I already have one of these, and well, I don’t think my husband would have appreciated the surcharge on the flight home for an oversized piece of ~~luggage~~ garbage. So I took a necessary respite at the closest Starbucks (can you believe it was over 4 blocks away?) and plotted.

My plan? I would convince my friend and her very rational husband that they should take the exersaucer for their little baby. I could see my friend, five months from now, all clean from her shower thanking me for rescuing her exersaucer from certain death. Right?

Wrong. The husband wanted nothing to do with it. But my friend paused. And after some pleading and begging and promising to buy the Lysol for him to clean it off, my friend’s husband obliged to at least investigate the dusty remnant of some other lucky baby. But after a quick walk down the block, he couldn’t bring himself to save it. He couldn’t get over carrying the ~~exersaucer~~ garbage into his apartment and presenting it to his pristine child. And so, the exersaucer died of a smelly crushing blow to its twirly-light-up thingamajigy.

What would the Freegans do?

As I said before, only in New York.

Tags: exersaucer, Freegan, New York City, new baby, baby toys, baby products

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1 On June 27th, 2007, Christy said:

I think of all the time over the years that my parents have ‘thrown out’ larger pieces of perfectly good furniture or other items. I guess the difference is though that they knew it would be gone within half a day, and never actually make it into the truck!

2 On June 27th, 2007, sugarmama said:

I could never just EASILY throw away a good thing like that. First I would keep it on the side along with the 10,000,000 things I can sell on ebay when I get a chance to take a pic and write a kick-ass description, and then if it sits in that same place long enough, then I would probably pull it out to sell in the garage sale, and if I didn’t get to do a garage sale, I would call anyone who might just want it for free, and if that still fails, then only then I would have to sorely dump it. hehe

btw — where is that review site of yours on products?

3 On June 27th, 2007, Shannon said:

Must be something about Exersaucers. My friend convinced me to buy a used one for $10 from a Mothers of Multiples sale. My husband was appalled, saying that our son could not play with “stranger toys.” I cleaned the thing with a bleach/water mixture, but still every time I put the kid in it, my husband says that we have to go out and get a new one ASAP.

4 On June 27th, 2007, My Minivan Is Faster Than Yours said:

Two words: tax deduction!

5 On June 29th, 2007, Shannanb said:

What a waste. There are so many great charities out there that would have taken that saucer and made it available to a child in need. What a shame and how irresponsible on the thrower-a-wayer’s part.

6 On July 14th, 2007, It’s not easy being green (with a baby living in Chicago) » Self-Made Mom said:

[…] anything to do with the Live Earth concert (which I’ll agree was unbelieveably dull) or the recent things I’ve seen being hauled off to garbage dumps, but for some reason in the last month I’m trying to make a […]