That is, until I realized that our recycling bins were lying unattended on the street.

See, I have this instinctive distrust for humankind that makes me angsty about leaving any belonging out in public for too long. I can’t put my beer down in a bar. I can’t leave my sweater on a picnic table when I’m 10 feet away playing badminton. Ever since we got our blue box and grey box, I’ve worried about them like an overprotective parent.

Every Saturday morning, I have this internal battle. Should I run down in my pyjamas to retrieve the recycling bins? Can I leave them until after breakfast? Is there a happy medium between neurotic freak and careless fool?

Seeing my face contort with uncertainty, my partner gallantly offered to go out and fetch the bins.

Minutes later, he ascended the stairs frowning, a solitary grey box clutched in his hand.

"Your blue box is gone."

"What?"

"It’s not there."

Not there?

I knew this would happen.

I tried to remain calm, sending him back outside to comb the street a second time.

Not.

There.

I’ve gone over this situation in my head more times than I’m willing to admit. Run through all the variables. Crunched all the numbers. And, in typical self-loathing manner, I’ve tried to find a way to blame myself.

Maybe it’s my fault for not getting up at the crack of dawn to retrieve the bin – or better yet, sitting on the doorstep at 1 a.m., watching the city wage slaves dump our bin and then carrying it victoriously back up to the apartment.

Perhaps my roommate and I shouldn’t have moved onto such a busy city street, where bins can only be emptied in the middle of the night. Maybe I should’ve turned down the apartment when I found out that recycling pick-up came in the dark and rowdy time between Friday night and Saturday morning.

Why on earth did you take it, anyway? Were you a drunken frat boy on a scavenger hunt? A crazy percussionist looking for a flat thing to hit? A pervert with a fetish for blue plastic? A new neighbour who couldn’t be bothered going through the necessary channels to secure your own bin?

Did you think we wouldn’t notice? Did you think we’d toss up our hands and say, "Oh well, that’s it for recycling then!" Did you think that we’d secretly be grateful to be freed from the responsibility of keeping our cans and bottles separate from the rest of our waste?

Maybe you genuinely thought we were finished with it when we waited till the leisurely hour of 10 a.m. to look for the thing. Maybe it’s punishment from the goddess of punctuality for sleeping in.

Perhaps you didn’t realize how much effort it took to get this blue box in the first place. You just figured it "came with the apartment," and we weren’t too attached. I’ll have you know, you rapscallion, that I hiked up a long and winding road to Community Earth Day, had to jump through bureaucratic hoops to prove we had recently moved, and then carried the bin (along with our grey box, which you mysteriously left untouched) back to the apartment. Or, rather, a friend carried it, but that’s not the point. It was a long, sweaty walk. A purposeful, devoted walk. We had planned it a week in advance.

See, there was no way to recycle when we moved in. Still, we couldn’t bring ourselves to toss recyclables into the trash, so instead we dutifully squirreled them away under the sink. When we ran out of room, we stashed them on the deck, in big plastic bags that got gnawed on nightly by raccoons. We wanted to recycle that badly.

With one selfish action, you destroyed the beauty that is curbside recycling.

Well, I’ve got news for you, bucko: this ain’t over. We’re on the lookout. We don’t forgive, we don’t forget, and we certainly have no qualms about vigilante justice.

There’s a special place in hell for people like you.

Yours vengefully,
Melinda

p.s. You’d better goddamn be recycling now. It’s the least you can do.

Melinda Mattos is the co-editor and co-publisher of Shameless (www.shamelessmag.com), a feminist magazine for teen girls, published out of various apartments and coffee shops in downtown Toronto. She has written and edited for the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, NOW, and a variety of top secret websites. She really wants her blue box back.