Chris, from the The Big Yellow House, wrote a hilarious piece on recycling carrots. Her post reminded me of an incident that happened with my kids and my mother-in-law about three years ago.
We were all hanging out at my mother-in-law's childhood home where we were engaged in the unpleasant job of preparing for a funeral. The parents, being somewhat preoccupied with cleaning and cooking and grieving over Grandpa, didn't notice right away that the kids in the house were leaving opened cans of pop sitting around. Everywhere.
The next morning, while the innocent children were still asleep, my mother-in-law collected about fifteen cans of pop that contained anywhere from a a quarter-can to a full can minus a few drops of various kinds of soft drinks. She gathered all of the cans, grabbed a large metal bowl from the cupboard, and dumped all of the pop, filling the bowl almost to the top. It was the most deadly looking suicide drink I'd ever seen.
When the sweet, innocent children awoke, Grandma called them into the kitchen, ready to give them an eye-opening object lesson.
"This," she said, "is all of the pop that I found around the house this morning. Pop is expensive. Because pop is expensive, no one will be wasting any more of it. For the rest of the day, if you want pop, you can get it right out of this bowl."
She expected groans and a chorus of "Eeeew! Gross!"
Instead, one child piped up with, "Where are the cups?" while the others asked questions like "Is there Sprite in it?" and "You mean we can drink pop for breakfast?"
She didn't let them drink it. I told her she should have. It sounded to me like her presentation was quite effective.
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