The Stinky Green Notebook

I was born in the 70s so yeah, I’m getting up there. My family lived in a small brown house by the Blacks Fork River in Wyoming when I was in sixth grade. A giant, sweat, sheep, and puke-smelling yellow bus picked us up before sunrise at the top of our steep, gravel driveway. While I didn’t enjoy the walk, the wind made it unbearable. It never stopped blowing.

Music, books, and a kind face were among the things that defined Ms. Mower, a plump, single woman in her 30s. She was both my English teacher and my basketball coach. I also had her for homeroom for an hour every day. Her requests to complete our writing logs were met with groans and eye rolls from all of us. The sole prompt I remember from that log is, “What do you hate most in the world? That’s a piece of cake for me! The wind! I loved to be outside, but the constant sound of it and the feeling of it whipping around was an annoyance, no matter the season. I carefully wrote my story, concluding with a statement similar to, “When I grow up, I will not live in Wyoming.” The notebooks were gathered and then redistributed. Our assignment was to read the distributed spiral entry. John’s green notebook hit my desk with a resounding THWACK! and I groaned at the sight of it. The cover had brown stains, and many pages were stuck together. John was the class weirdo. He constantly wore ill-fitting pants, secured with makeshift baling twine belts. John’s eyes were dark brown and matched his tangled hair. Despite his gangly build, he towered over his classmates by a foot or more. John was reserved, mostly keeping to himself. No one wanted to be his friend or be near him because he smelled like the dumpster outside of the cafeteria on a hot day. I wish I could say here that I was different, that I took that kid by the hand and we developed a wonderful friendship, but I was just like all the rest (teachers included) and could not see the boy behind the mess. A quick, silent reading of his words sent blood rushing to my face and brought tears to my eyes. My stomach filled with butterflies and I thought for sure I was going to puke. I put my head on my desk but quickly jerked it back up when the smell of the green notebook traveled up my nose. Sharing John’s writings would further isolate him. Sixth graders are merciless, gathering around like predators when they detect vulnerability. There was no way I was reading from the stinky green notebook. I raised my hand and shakily asked for the bathroom pass. Ms. Mower looked at my face and then gestured for me to come to her desk. She asked if I was feeling okay and I told her I most certainly did not feel okay and needed to be excused. With a concerned expression, she gave me the pass before I ran out the door and down the hallway to the restroom, where I remained until the bell rang, marking the end of homeroom and the start of lunch. Ten more minutes ticked by as I silently wished Mower was doing the lunch detail. She was not. She was sitting at her desk with John’s stinky green notebook in her puffy hands. In a split second, her kind eyes met mine and her lips turned into a smile. She asked if I was feeling better and I said that I was as I made a beeline for my desk to gather my stuff and get the heck out of there before she remembered that I had missed over half of her class. She observed my difficulty stuffing my hot pink trapper keeper into the old blue backpack. Rushing out the door, I mumbled something about hunger causing my discomfort.

John hated living in the dump more than anything else in the world, and I was bitching about the wind. In his account, he described his family’s habit of scavenging through discarded items, sharing instances of remarkable discoveries such as a perfectly fitting fur coat for his mother and bikes that required minimal repairs for him and his five brothers to ride like BMX racers. The smell and the constant, high-pitched squawking of the seagulls, which also fouled their camper with their droppings at night, were his complaints. Facing a lack of electricity and water, my complaints about the wind seemed petty. He concluded by expressing his hope that their stay at the dump was temporary, his father’s diligent job applications, and his anticipation of having his own bed. After that day, I always received the smelly green notebook, which I didn’t mind. It was short-lived. Before sixth grade was over, John transferred to a new school and I never saw him again.

Netflix’s documentary, “Buy Now”, made me think of the boy who lived at the dump. We are consuming mass quantities of everything and it’s all going into landfills all over the earth and little is being done to stop us from destroying the only home we have. I am not blameless for this catastrophe, but I do feel powerless to stop it. I live in an area that recycles nothing. I can save, wash and separate with the best of them but I have nowhere to take it. Currently, I am focussing on not buying whatever it is I can’t recycle. I don’t need a new phone just because the latest model takes epically exceptional pictures and I don’t need the latest wrinkle cream because there is just no hope for this face and I can’t recycle the container. I have started making my toothpaste, which is super disgusting and tastes like feet, but it’s a little less going to the landfill. I use reusable zip-lock bags and take my own bags shopping. Paying more attention to sustainability is new for me and usually leaves me disappointed with my favorite products. Because paying more for something recyclable, repairable, and sustainably sourced makes sense to me, I try to base my purchase decisions on those criteria. My husband thinks I’ve lost my marbles and blames my recent changes solely on the watching of the documentary. While it was a catalyst, it was a combination of many factors that have made me want to just do better. We can all just do better.