Hey you. Yes, you. At the drink dispenser. Filling your Styrofoam cup with water and capping it with a plastic lid. You who I see doing this every day. You who gets up from your desk. Walks to the cafeteria. Grabs a brand new cup from the stack and sets it on the drain shelf. Fills it with water — water! not even a fragrant, tinted beverage like juice or soda, but clear, odorless water – and then snaps the lid into place and returns to your desk. Yes, YOU.
Stop. Stop doing this. Just stop. It doesn’t make sense. Why do you need a new Styrofoam cup — which doesn’t biodegrade and is recycled almost nowhere — every day of the week? Doesn’t this seem a bit excessive to you? Have you never heard of the three Rs? Or the Three Tenors? (They’re delightful.)
Listen. I’m not asking you to invest $10 in a BPA-free Nalgene or Klean Kanteen. This is not an unreasonable thing for me to ask, of course — you should, in fact, do this — but this is not what I am asking you. What I am asking you — what I am calmly, patiently, handsomely, nakedly (ahem) asking you — is to use your 12 ounces of cylindrically shaped extruded polystyrene foam two bloody days in a row.
This is what I am asking you, because this is literally the least you can do. Okay, not literally literally, but close enough. So can you do this for me? Use the same cup two days in a row? I wouldn’t ask you to do this with your underwear, or your mouthwash, or your labradoodle [Editor's note: WTF?], but this I feel comfortable asking.
Please don’t make me beg. Because I don’t beg. I weg. There’s a difference. Now make a difference.
I have added a new page to the “Permanently Pertinent” section in my sidebar, which I have ingeniously titled “The Prank Story.” I have titled it this because it is a story about a prank. I briefly considered calling it “A Story about a Prank,” but, in the end, chose not to, because brevity is the soul of wit, and I am nothing if not very, very, extremely — some might say preponderously — witty, not to mention brief.
