Millions of years from now, archaeologists will be digging up the one thing in our society that will prevail over all else - Styrofoam.
Who among us does not groan upon opening a carton to find foam peanuts that instantly leap out to dance joyously all over the room? To try to brush away the little bearers of static electricity that have a life of their own?
Many years ago, when my husband and I lived on the windy California desert, our neighbors, Vernon and Joyce, foolishly standing outdoors at the time, opened a huge carton, discovering too late that it was full of peanuts. They watched helplessly as the little beasts wafted skyward, ground-ward, horizontally, vertically, forming a vortex of stuff never imagined in all the eons since that desert was formed. Some latched onto Joshua trees, impaling themselves on the harsh spines, where they doubtless remain today. Others landed, eventually, in sage brush, perhaps as far as 50 miles away.
As long as we lived there we rarely ventured outside without discovering peanuts underfoot, in the dog’s coat, on the power lines or clinging to the chain link fence. They topped the salads we served on the patio, clung to laundry on the line, found their way inside the car where they began a struggle to get out the minute we hit the road. Open the window to shoo them out? They slunk into deep cover.
In another desert neighborhood, the family next door did the exact same thing. They released Styrofoam peanuts into the wild. We had an outdoor hot tub on our patio - to relax in, you know. After that day, it was just the two of us along with hundreds of peanuts that did not ever relax, especially when we turned on the air jets. We’d scoop them out, and they would instantly replace themselves. Conversation was at a minimum because as part of their wild celebration they liked to leap into our mouths.
Far in the future behavioral scientists might be studying these peanuts. As I said, they are social things, and though at present we have no means to determine the truth of this, my theory is that they do have an active - you know - life. They procreate like mad, maybe inside shipping cartons, maybe after they arrive at our homes. They are a life force unmatched in nature. You can’t tell me that they are just chugging Mountain Dew and watching movies when they hide under the refrigerator.
Last Monday my husband, Jack, was in the basement, doing trash duty, as is mandatory on Monday. Sitting in the upstairs bedroom I heard wrenching shrieks, pounding, stomping and (I’m pretty sure) muttered curses.
I know better than to interfere at such times. Why would I? I=m no good at fighting muggers, rabid cats or Homeland Security personnel gone amok, so I stayed put. When Jack came upstairs I asked in my best pseudo-shrink tone, “Building a room in the basement, are we?”
“Breaking up Styrofoam for the trash,” he said testily. “That stuff is impossible. Once you break it into smaller pieces, little flecks break off and fly all over the place. You can=t get rid of them.”
No kidding.
Fact is, these little flecks are peanuts in training. They are sent out into the world to proselytize, to unite the Nation of Styrofoam and prepare it to take over the universe.
It won’t be global warming, a mega-bomb or a pandemic. None of those will sink us. It will be a whimper - slow clogging of essential pipelines, gradual loss of farmland, masses of little flecks rendering basements useless. These little flecks led by larger flecks, leading to unimaginable chaos in the world as we know it.
Do not say that you were not warned.
