“Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
“But that’s littering. That’s bad for the earth.”
“It’s not littering. It’s . . . free-range recycling. Give it a shot. It’ll be cool.”
“Okay.”
She took the cup and flung it down onto the rocks, where it smashed into a thousand pieces. Oh, what a fantastic sound it made. I felt like I had just hit a baseball five hundred feet. I desperately wished there were another two dozen coffee cups stacked around us so that we could smash them over and over again. There’s something immensely satisfying about destroying things. Children know this all too well. Eventually, you grow old and you learn to not break things. But you never lose the sense of elation that comes from breaking them. That lies dormant inside you until the day you decide to take your kid out for some petty vandalism.
I was marveling at the shattered pottery scattered about the rocks when I heard footsteps behind us. I turned and saw the same old guy who had kept pace with us earlier run by. He had seen us throwing the coffee cup. He was staring at us and I looked away because I hated having his eyes on me. I grabbed the girl.
“We gotta go.”
“That was so cool!” she said.
“I know, but now we gotta get out of here.”
We started walking back home, with the old guy forty yards in front of us. I made certain to keep our distance so that we wouldn’t catch up and come face-to-face with him. But then all of us came to an intersection and the DON’T WALK sign was up and blinking. The old man stopped, and now we were in danger of catching up to him before the light turned. I slowed down to a crawl, as if I were walking in place. I thought about stopping forty yards from the light and milling around, but that would have felt even more conspicuous. So my daughter and I strolled to the light and I steadfastly avoided eye contact.
“You know, I saw you throw that cup,” the old man said to me.
Guhhhhhhhhh.
I turned to him. “Oh?”
“I’m on the Rock Creek Preservation Committee.”
Are you fucking shitting me? “Oh.”
“Yeah, we’re trying to keep garbage out of the creek, not put more garbage into it.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. It won’t happen again.”
“That’s just my opinion on the matter.”
“I get it. I totally see where you’re coming from. I’m sorry.” The light still hadn’t changed and now I wanted to leap in front of an oncoming Metrobus.
We stood there for ten more painful seconds until the WALK sign flashed and we could finally cross. The girl and I scampered over to the other side and turned left to go home. The old man kept on going straight, and I whispered a little thank-you to the heavens when he finally vanished out of sight. I pictured him going home and calling the police on me. It was imperative that my daughter and I get home as quickly as possible and hide in the basement so that law enforcement officials could never track us down.
“What did that man say?” the girl asked me.
“He said we shouldn’t litter.”
“Did we litter?”
“We, uh . . . Look, we’re not gonna do it again. That was just a one-time deal. Don’t go throwing stuff into rivers or else people will get mad. You understand?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
The next day, I put on all my workout clothes and the gross iPod armband. My daughter was splayed out on the couch watching TV, each of her limbs resting on a different cushion. I walked up to her.
“I’m going for another walk,” I said. “You wanna come?”
“Nah,” she said.
“Really? But we had a great time last time.”
“Nah. I don’t wanna.”
“I won’t listen to music.”
“Nah.”
“We don’t have to walk as fast. Or as far.”
“Nah.”
“We could smash another coffee cup.”
“Dad! You can’t litter!”
“No, I suppose we can’t.”
Sometimes you can’t get a kid out of the house until you walk out the door. So I put on my socks and my sneakers and made it clear to the girl that I was prepared to leave without her.
“I’m putting on my socks.”
No reply.
“I’m putting on my sneakers now.”
No reply.
“I am now opening the door.”
No reply.
“I am now opening the screen door, which is the last barrier between myself and the outside.”
No reply.
The door slammed shut behind me and I found myself out for a walk, alone. I set out down the path toward the creek where the girl had walked for over an hour and engaged with me in petty misdemeanors. I was unencumbered, free to power walk as fast or as slow as I pleased. It didn’t feel anywhere near as liberating as it used to.
ELECTRIC TOOTHBRUSH