Injury to Insult

The warm and fuzzy feelings that so frequently follow a hug are harshly stripped away the moment you discover once and for all that you are a loser. It isn’t your fault, really; you were created a loser and there is nothing you could have done to change that. No amount of delay would have helped. Some might say you were fated to fail. Whatever the reason, the fact remains; you are a loser.

As if being a loser wasn’t enough, as though you needed more conformation to know that your life was a horrible disappointment, you are carelessly and heartlessly discarded – trash, garbage, worthless, valueless – the loving embrace you had lived in is gone and with it goes all hope of appreciation or status, of joy and of having a place in the heart of a very special someone... or a mildly tolerable anyone. You are thrown out and onto the street, left to end your days being trampled by the sopping, muddy shoes of the world.

How quickly we discard the losers, without so much as the respect to provide a proper burial for them; not in a cemetery, not even at a place for cremation, not even taking the time to make sure that all those losers end up exactly where they should; namely, the recycling.

Yes, I’m talking about all those “Please Play Again” mistreated Tim Horton’s loser coffee cups. I’m not trying to make a serious argument that your personified hot beverage holder has feelings – because it doesn’t. It’s made of cardboard and wax – but I would like to submit to you the idea that our planet is, to some degree, alive. So, this is a letter for you litterbugs: sidewalks are not trashcans, snow banks are not blue-bins and the street is not your personal garbage bag. Give your loser coffee cups a respectful and responsible finale to their short-lived and thankless lives. If you will not reduce or reuse, then please stop adding injury to insult: recycle.