The schools need to do a better job of preparing our children — for the pointlessness of chores and the tedium of homeownership.
Those financial literacy initiatives are all well and good — you know, remind the young of their mortality, encourage them to look ahead to their flagging dotage; never too early to start saving, so think about an I.R.A. But when you get right down to it, adult life is really more about dealing with fallen leaves and bathroom ceiling mold.
Leaves on the ground. In all the world is there a single household “action item” less satisfying? They’re light, sure, but they take up hectares of space; they have mass out of all proportion to their intransigent nature. And if you refuse to blow, you rake, as the thumb blister leaks and the deltoids throb.
They simply won’t go away. Enough ink has already been spilled over backpack leaf blowers, the high whine, the exhaust, the ubiquity. But I do wonder what shooting brown vegetal matter into the middle of the street does for anybody. Isn’t that just shifting the burden a bit? If I take my swelling bag of fetid kitchen garbage and dump it on my neighbor’s front lawn, that hasn’t exactly solved the disposal problem.
Yet there I was Sunday, dutifully stuffing 10 huge paper sacks with dead leaves and carting them off to the landfill — actually a newly mountainous region in North Sea concealing an overstuffed former dumping ground, now a “transfer station” where every last scrap of Southampton Town’s considerable dross is gathered to be trucked to the Pennsylvania vastness.
Combine that with the giant tarp loads I dragged into the woods on my property, where they don’t seem to disintegrate at all but remain forevermore, and it’s worse than sweeping the sun off the roof — given the choice, Sisyphus himself would opt for putting his shoulder to the rock once more, this time with feeling. At least it’s something he can get a handle on.
So no, even with home schooling in vogue, even with an extra rake, in the end I chose to spare the kids. Leaf class dismissed. Till next year.