Cans For Cash! By Joy.

The Boyd Family’s socio-economic status can best be explained in the form of a simple math equation: Phil (preacher) + Syl (housewife) + 4 kids = negative money. Some parents tell their kids they’re not made of money, but they don’t mean it and their kids know it. When Phil and Syl told us they weren’t made of money, we believed them (see equation, above). For those of you who read about my quest to become Mrs. Davy Crockett, you must have wondered how a family that tap danced on the poverty line swung a trip to the happiest place on earth. Sit back, dear reader, and prepare to be amazed.

As a nerdy kid growing up in a steadily declining neighborhood in downtown Rochester, New York, I learned quickly about the value of a pop can* (*To all my Southern friends: “pop” = yankee-speak for Coke). In New York, each pop can was worth 5¢--a paltry sum, unless it was combined with hundreds, nay thousands, of other pop cans. This simple principle was the impetus for Syl’s plan to get the Boyd Family to Disney World. Ever the dreamer, Syl was convinced that we could collect enough pop cans to pay for our family to go to Disney World. Many scoffed at her idea (ahem, Phil), but I, in my childlike naïveté, thought it was a brilliant idea! I had no idea how many pop cans it would take to get our family to Disney World, but I was certain we would make it. And thus the journey began.

While a family of six is certainly a good start in terms of a labor force, Syl knew that Operation Disney World would require many more hands. We were, after all, on a time crunch. The Deaf Baptist Bible Conference in Orlando was only four (4) months away! Plus, our family of six wasn’t exactly the ideal worker pool. Jemina was three at the time and, let’s face it, essentially useless. James, Josh and I were 11, 9, and 7 respectively, and, though we were energetic and motivated, we were constrained by school, homework, and early bed times. Enter the Deaf Ministry. At this point in my childhood, Phil was a deaf pastor who had his own deaf ministry. I still don’t know how Syl managed it, but she somehow convinced the congregation to join her cause. Maybe the parishioners viewed the Boyd children (and perhaps me in particular) as a homely lot and they took pity on us. Or maybe Syl took some liberties with the Word and insinuated that their place in heaven might be jeopardized if they didn’t do “God’s Work.”

According to the gospel of Syl, God’s work meant following her to local schools, community colleges and universities in search of the holy trinity of pop cans: Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper products. Twice a week, I would go to bed as Phil and Syl gathered a group of volunteers in our living room and mapped out the locations to be hit that night. Week after week I begged to be allowed to join them. My motive was twofold: one, to collect tons of pop cans and thereby get to Disney World that much sooner; and two, to escape my ridiculously early bedtime of 7:30 p.m. After weeks of nagging Phil and Syl, they finally let me accompany them on a late night excursion. On a school night. A double victory! On this particular night, the target was Rochester Institute of Technology, a huge university with hundreds of trash cans and receptacles with untold numbers of shiny cans inside.

When we arrived on campus, we split up into groups of three to five people and fanned out. I was in Syl’s group. Up and down the dimly lit halls we marched in search of our treasure. When a garbage can full of loot was spotted, furious hands movements, flickering light switches, and unmistakable shrieks of delight ensued. Unfortunately, most of the cans were not situated at the top of the garbage can, awaiting our arrival. Rather, the cans were usually buried under a pile of crumpled paper, discarded food, empty water bottles, and the like. For reasons unclear to me now, I always volunteered to burrow deep into the garbage can and go after the cans located in the receptacle’s deepest recesses. Although I was of above-average height even then, I required a little assistance in this regard. Said assistance came in the form of two volunteers hoisting me up and lowering me into the can, by the ankles while I rummaged around, grabbing three or four cans, then wiggling my legs to request an extraction (I couldn’t ask to be lifted out; these are deaf people, remember?). And so this process continued in the empty classrooms and break rooms, the lavatories and the common areas, me being lowered into each garbage can, rummaging, releasing, and repeating, until I was fully satisfied that I had fully excavated the last aluminum nickel and emerged, glasses smudged, she-mullet matted, satisfied, syrupy and sticky up to the elbows.

Slowly but surely, each passing week, we grew steadily closer to our goal. Each week Syl would announce our monetary take for the week, along with the total amount collected thus far. After four long months, Syl announced that we had finally reached our magic number: $3,000.00. To save you some needless mental exercise, $3,000.00 equals 60,000 pop cans. Impressive, eh? Luckily, my brothers and I were too young to realize that we and our parents looked like homeless vagabonds every time we passed a trash can and one of us rooted through its contents. Unfortunately, Syl’s crusade forever imprinted the idea that cans = cash in my brain. At this very second, I have a trash bag pregnant with cans in a kitchen cabinet. I tell myself that I am being responsible, that I am going to recycle them. Soon. I know that I can’t get 5¢ apiece for them because Alabama doesn’t care enough about the environment to bribe her citizens to recycle. Still, I think I subconsciously resent that fact and I continue to hoard my cans for no apparent reason. Thanks for nothing, Syl! The End.

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