The Styrofoam Coffee Cup

I worked at IBM for some years.  I started as a co-op when I was nineteen and when I graduated from college I took a position there for a few years.   I moved from there to several consulting companies, but never really escaped working with the IBM product area in which I originally worked.  They were good products and the people at and surrounding IBM were nice to work with.  I have no complaints.

This post is about one person I remember from back in 1990.   He was a consultant, brought in to teach us about this new and exciting technology, Object-Oriented Programming.   Specifically, he was there to teach us all about Smalltalk.   Not the chit chat kind, the powerful programming language of the same name.

We had a cafeteria in the large, two-winged "Software Lab" in which we worked.  It was a beautiful cafeteria.  You ate at tables in a vaulted four-story dining area that looked out onto a large open deck which overlooked a lake.   We sometimes ate in the cafeteria, but more commonly we'd bring our meals or tea and muffin back to our desks and work while we ate.

I noticed one day that that consultant, now my friend, had a styrofoam coffee cup that was stained and looking rather worse for wear.   I asked him about it and he told me he used the same coffee cup multiple times when he went down to get coffee.   The cup was still good he said, why waste another one?

I didn't get green back then and I didn't care about my consumption of natural resources.   Back then the way I recycled was exclusively through landfills.   I didn't get it.

But now I do.   He was way ahead of the rest of us.

The Big Boy Update:  My son asked at breakfast this morning, "do ladybugs turn into flowers?"

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter and son were playing in the bonus room above the garage this afternoon.  I was working on the main floor when suddenly I heard her running down the stairs saying, "daddy's home.  I'm going to go say hi to him in the garage!"   She had heard the garage door open under the floor of the bonus room and she knew what that meant.   I had no idea my husband was home until she told me.