another case of severe diatribe

Small Plastic Toys

            I hate them. Gaudy, little chunks of society drifting from dump to roadside to some wasteland of a bedroom. It irks me how they are everywhere and they serve no purpose; like chemical plastic children, sent in armies to force the world to its knees. The race of man has the gift of the gods, the ability and desire to create. Yet this is what we have come to… concocting things like this.

            Someone spent hours designing this, someone else had to invent a machine to create it by the thousands, and some poor person had to work (most likely underpaid) to manufacture it. Then some gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing truck had to ship it here across the forever stretch of highway. And now what is it? Nothing. A hunk of plastic that can move its arm.

Oh, but this pathetic story continues.

It arrives in its plastic bag, covered in warnings in various languages, as if to prove that it has already conquered the world. The words ‘Do not swallow,” are a perfect testament to its superior communication skills. And then there’s the minuscule picture in the corner that is supposed to signify throwing it away. If we are educated enough to read, then we are not going to digest the plastic. On the other hand, if we are illiterate enough to not know how to throw something away, we most likely aren’t going to comprehend the concept of public cleanliness anyway.

Why not just leave the plastic bag off? It’s not as though it provides much protection. We shouldn’t worry about whether or not it’s going to get scratched or broken. After all, creations of such plastic waste are indestructible, unbiodegradable, and immortal.

It arrives at its destination, and patiently waits for its unveiling to the ignorant public.

Some parent strolls into the food stop behind an eager five year old with a whinny voice who’s begging for something, anything, ‘but not what you want, what I want.’ So they sit in the smelly, grease-barn and chow on salted indigestibles. And out comes the ‘happy’ toy, in its ‘happy’ box, with its ‘happy’ wrapper about trash and choking. 

As the child is obviously distracted from the food, the parent takes it away.

Scream, yell, cry. And the toy is returned.

            Give it two days and it’s lost. Forgotten. Lying on the floor of a messy van, or on cramped bedroom shelves or outside in the yard. Perhaps it is partially ingested by a now wiser, though orally debilitated, dog. But here it will sit, pathetic, until someone picks it up. And if they don’t throw it away, or try to give it away, they’ll try to sell it at a garage sale, which will inevitably fail. The only logical place left for it to go will be the donation store; the retirement center for humanity’s nearly worthless junk.

It’s worth fifty cents because the arm still moves.

And there the toy will sit, again, until it is as scuffed as the wood floor of a tap studio and the arm is permanently stuck at a ninety-degree angle.

            Some other desperate parent agrees to buy it for their teary-eyed, needs-a-nap child. The parent pays, again, for a temporarily placated child. But the child will lob it at someone’s head and the toy will be put on the top of the refrigerator, where it will sit and gather dust.

            The cycle continues… again and again.

And we pay for it again and again, only to find we can’t get rid of it, like a parasitic termite in the dying woods of societal consciousness.

Finally it gets thrown away. It is gone forever to the place where homeless things go. The dump.

Lost.

Gone.

Trash.

Never thought of again.

. . .

I’m scared of a lot of things; the smelly garbage truck that backed over our car, disposable dishes… ghosts. Mostly I’m scared of ghosts. I’m scared they’ll fill up the whole world, until there isn’t any room left for us living people. I’m scared because I know that they can’t die or disappear, biodegrade or turn to dust.

I’m scared of McDonald’s Happy Meal Toys: because they can’t die, and their ghosts will haunt us for eternity.