The Law of Nature

 

M is totally into three things right now - Star Wars, space exploration, and garbage. As he recently explained to a friend, "you can't throw trash anywhere, but a trash can. It's the first law of nature." Whenever he sees even a small piece of wrapper on the grass, he points to it and says: "someone disrespected nature. We need to pick it up".

In case you think we are talking about nature conservancy in our homeschool, we are not. Not specifically, that is. So where does he get his ideas? From YouTube, of course! One of our playlists on YouTube is made up almost entirely of videos of garbage trucks, recycling facilities, and tours of city dumps.

A few weeks ago M told me that he wanted to go pick up trash at a park. Why a park? Because, as he explained, a garbage truck can't drive through a park. And since a truck can't come to a park, who would pick up trash there if not a trash picker-upper superhero. How could I argue with that? He was so fired up about his idea that he even went on to make a cape for himself, naturally out of a cut-up trash bag.

For a while the weather wasn't in our favor. But the day before we left for NY, it finally happened - sunny, almost hot, and gorgeous. I suggested we'd go to the NCSU Arboretum. I didn't think we'd find much trash there. But turns out, we found just enough. M started off walking around looking for junk to pick up with the super-claw, but then got carried away with all the beauty around him.

Still, after finding and picking up each piece of trash, he'd put it in the plastic bag and exclaim: "Look, Mama, how much we already picked! We are good trash pickers, aren't we?" And once we were done and on our way back to the car, he said proudly: "Good thing we came here, Mama. Without us, the planet might had died."