52. Trash Grabber

Nora loves a good walk, and she always sees two of her neighbors out doing their part to keep the streets clean.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

INTRO MUSIC

I’m Nora McInerny and it’s going to be okay.

One of the things I like most about my neighborhood is that it’s walkable. As far as a sprawling metropolis with limited sidewalks and a lot of speeding, cars can be walkable. I walk the kids to school in the morning. If I am available, I will also walk and pick them up in the afternoons. And one of the best things about walking in the neighborhood is that I’m not the only person out there walking, and a lot of my neighbors are on a similar schedule, not necessarily walking their kids to school, but just out, out and about. 

So today’s okay thing which is more than okay. It’s a couple that I have crossed literal paths with almost every day since we moved here in 2020. They walk morning, they walk afternoon. They also walk at night. They walk their little dog. He holds a radio. She holds one of those grabber things. It’s plastic. There’s kind of a pincher claw at the end. They’re walking, they’re talking, they’re listening to the radio and they’re picking up trash. 

There is unfortunately, quite a lot of trash in Phoenix, Arizona. I don’t know if people got the litter bug memo here. More than once, I’ve been at a stoplight and watched somebody open their door and just drop a soda cup outside, which I didn’t know people did in real life. But they do, unfortunately. 

And one of the best things about this couple is that they’re out there cleaning up. They’re out there cleaning up these streets. If I’m wearing my yellow crocs, he will call out, “Didn’t see you coming!” And I will laugh every single time, as though I have never heard him say that before. Now that my hair is pink, I don’t have to be wearing the yellow crocs. He will just say, I almost didn’t see you there! And all three of us will laugh. I mean, his wife thinks his jokes are very funny. I think his jokes are very funny. 

By the way, we’ve never said more than that to each other. We simply cross paths. They make that joke. He makes that joke. I laugh, we wave. And every once in a while we’ll make a commentary about the amount of garbage. Sometimes I’m picking it up with my bare hands because I don’t have a grabber. And also it’s kind of positive peer pressure. I see them do it. I don’t want them to think I’m a slouch. I should do something. 

It’s not okay that people don’t respect our environment. It’s not okay that there is so much garbage to pick up that sometimes this woman is carrying a small basket and sometimes she’s carrying a garbage bag. But what’s okay? 

What’s more than okay to me is that they’re out there picking it up anyway. I’m going to make a leap here and I want you to jump with me, okay? There’s a lot of trash. There’s a lot of trash in the world. There’s a lot of garbage. Sometimes it piles up. It can seem daunting. It can seem overwhelming. It can seem honestly, sometimes completely pointless. 

And yet. 

There are people out there showing up anyways. With their dog, with a radio playing. Talk radio out loud for all of us to enjoy with a grabber, with a garbage bag or a basket. Picking up what they can. I don’t know what today is going to bring you. There might be some garbage. 

We’re not going to clean it all up. We’re just going to grab what we can.

OUTRO MUSIC

CREDITS