Megan's Blog

My Alaskan father, newly retired, drove to the Midwest in his pick-up truck to spend two months bow hunting with his brothers. Before he left, he bought supplies that he’d need for the road: water, oil, tools, and a bulk box of Yoplait Low Fat Yogurt—‘bout a hundred 6 oz containers total. He wasn’t very far into Canada when he realized he’d bought strawberry yogurt, which he doesn’t like, so when he stopped off in Chicago to visit us, he gave us the box. This is how I have a hundred containers of yogurt in my fridge.

So these days, I’ve been eating yogurt. Which tastes good and is good for me—gives me calcium and acidophilus and all that—but what I want to talk about is how the little aluminum foil lids on the yogurt containers are pink, and they say Save Lids to Save Lives. You save your lids and mail them back to Yoplait, where they’ll recycle them plus donate ten cents per to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.

I mention this because there’s a bowl in my kitchen with like thirty pink lids in it, and every time I look at it I think, Man, how easy is this? It’s nothing—takes no extra time, no extra energy, no deviation from my usual routine save a postage stamp—to do a little good here and there. An important reminder for me, I think. The more little things I do, maybe, maybe things’ll look up somewhere for somebody. Like, the Honcho at the Department of energy was talking on NPR about how if (and these numbers are totally wrong but you get my drift) a million American change one light bulb in their house to the energy-efficient ones, that’ll save a boatload on energy costs. A fuckin’ lightbulb!
How easy is that!