By By ROBBIE BYRD
News Editor
In the busy rush of a hectic week, I kind of forgot something.
And let me tell you why
Moving to a new place is, while at sometimes frustrating, exciting. There is always something new to see and do. There is always someone new to meet and someone new to talk to.
And trust me, I've done a lot of meeting and greeting over the last week.
Some have introduced themselves by name; others have introduced themselves by their life stories.
And you know? I personally like the latter better. But that's probably because that's my job: to listen to people and tell their stories.
But, in the hustle and bustle of getting settled in, I neglected to mention anything about myself. And I think it only fair that if I'm to hear your life story, then you should probably hear mine.
Well, let me begin
In 1982 I was born in Monroeville to Beverly and Vince Byrd. As a baby my head was cone-shaped. Don't ask why; I've been trying to figure it out my entire life.
But I digress
As a baby, I loved juice. Any kind of juice would do: orange, grape, fruit cocktail punch, just about any kind.
And I also liked to talk. My mother and grandmother say I whined a lot, but I prefer to say that I was a "vocal baby."
Well, maybe we should just move on.
As I was pondering ideas for the best way to tell someone about yourself, I remembered a column a friend of mine had done years back.
She said that she had heard the easiest way to find out about someone was to go through their garbage.
Mine had been emptied earlier today, so I decided to take a trip out to the dumpster and find my garbage bag.
Well, here's what I found:
Three aluminum cans of 7 Up
Pages and Pages of different typestyles that were discarded for possible usage in this paper
Press Releases (of course I typed them into my computer first)
Sack from lunch
Empty box of Post-It Notes
Bills
And my keys (How did they get in there??)
Well, I was having a hard time remembering exactly how to "decipher" this garbage interpretive reading.
Granted I believed the whole mess was a bunch of garbage, but I decided to email the contents of my trash can to my old colleague and see how she interpreted my little basket o wonders.
Well, the reply I got was this:
Because those cans could have been recycled, you're wasteful
Because you wasted page after page printing out fonts when you could have looked at them on the computer, you're wasteful
Because you could probably save 100 trees a year by asking that press releases be emailed to you instead of typed, printed and mailed, you're wasteful
Because you could have eaten inside the restaurant and eaten off of a washable plate, you're wasteful
Because you could have used your computer to type in your notes instead of wasting Post-it note after Post-It note, and because you've only been there less than a month and have already went through an entire box, you're wasteful
Because, again, you haven't caught up with the technological world and pay for your bills electronically, eliminating all that unnecessary paper shuffling, you're wasteful
And you're keys? Well maybe that's because you would lose your head if it wasn't screwed on."
Well, the more I got to thinking about it, she was right.
But hey, what's the point of having a wastebasket if you can't be wasteful?
Robbie Byrd is News Editor of The Atmore Advance.