Waste Not

It is January.  And, it is this month that I tend to spend more time thinking..... a dangerous pastime!

(You know, right?)

[edit: By the way, if you are not certain why it is I do this thinking/dangerous pastime thing, you should check out the song from Beauty and the Beast that is shared on this YouTube post.  You only need to hear the first few seconds to understand.]

In any event, this post is a dangerous pastime/thinking post and a 'faux real stories' post because I get to combine both into one!  It is a momentous occasion.  You might want to mark your calendars and make an entry in your diary chronicling where you are right now.  It could be important.  Then again, you could just enjoy this blog post, for what it is worth.

For some reason, I was thinking about the tendency of many (not all) people to be wasteful.  In fact, I suspect we are all wasteful at some level and in different ways.  But, specifically, my thoughts were responding to three things.

1. An observation I heard on the radio (NPR) regarding how those with wealth tend to be wasteful of resources as opposed to those who struggle to meet ends meet, who tend to be less wasteful of resources - if only out of necessity.

2. A discussion I have had (more than once) with others about the tension surrounding decisions regarding new versus used versus repairing what you have for tools on the farm.

3. On a different front, I was realizing an unhappy anniversary since it was about this time in 1995 that I learned of the death of my best friend from high school, Jeff Mellick.

All of which reminded me of this story.
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Jeff and I were partners for the Newton High School debate squad and we went to many tournaments during the school year.  We were a reasonably good team, but lost our Junior year due to a faculty change at the high school.  As such, we were a year behind in experience during our Senior year.  Can you imagine how painful it was for us to have judges say, "Wow!  You guys are pretty good.  You'll be winning all sorts of tournaments next year."

Our thought bubble: (Yeah, thanks.  Can we get a redshirt option?)


Teams from school "B" were clearly from an affluent area and their teams had a number of resources other schools did not have.  We found these people to be (typically, not always) rude and they often found ways to belittle others.  This was made worse by the fact that school B teams often won.  Jeff and I didn't begrudge them winning.  After all, they went to more tournaments, spent more time practicing and simply focused on it more than we (and most other teams) did.  In fact, we could forgive some of the attitude as well.  Some of it may have bred by the peer group they were in and there are many other possible reasons we couldn't be aware of. 

But, the tipping point was watching how most of the members of these teams would waste materials.

A debate team consisted of TWO members and it was the norm for each member to use legal pads to keep notes of the 'flow' of the debate.  Jeff and I would each use a whole legal pad over the course of four or five tournaments, using both the front and back of the sheets as needed.  These people would use up one to two legal pads EACH per match.  To put this in perspective, there were usually six matches in a tournament, plus play off rounds.

Folks, that is a conservative estimate of 12 legal pads used over a two day period of time for one team from school B in one weekend.  It would not be an exaggeration to say that these people attended twelve to sixteen tournaments a school year.  That's easily 150 legal pads for one team of two people.

It wouldn't have been so bad if these legal pads were used entirely.  But, usually there was one line written on each page and many pages toward the back were still blank.   And once the round was over, they would discard the entire pad.  Sometimes in the trash.  Sometimes, just left on desks..or the floor...or wherever.

Jeff and I were not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth.  We would often pick up these legal pads and make use of them ourselves.  Why not?  Just cross out or erase one line on a page and it is good to go.  But, that's not the best part.

One day, we noticed that a careless member of one of school B's teams had left a copy of a key argument sandwiched between pages of a discarded legal pad.  Normally, an opposing team would not have much time to view and prepare against such an argument prior to a debate.  But, we had a break and we were going to be facing one of the toughest teams from school B the next day.  Simply put, the oddsmakers didn't give us a chance in that round.  But, oddsmakers didn't know what we had in our possession.

We spent some time dissecting what we had and preparing a counter argument that was specific to it.  Often, teams could only come up with more general attacks against a particular argument, so this was a step up.  But, we also took the time to figure out what their counter arguments might be and prepared for those.

To say that we took great delight in dismantling school B's team the next day would be an understatement. 

Recycling or Re-purposing at its best?
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I still miss my good friend.  And, the one thing you want when you lose a good friend is the one thing you can't have - a chance to talk to them again.  Instead, I partake in the next best thing, remembering Jeff and the stories we created together as friends.