Garbage is dirty. It’s a fact. Earlier this month I found myself diving into a dumpster to retrieve some items our son had thrown beneath the garbage bag. While our garbage is relatively clean (mostly organic produce and eggs), the same could not be said for the dumpster I dove into earlier. Quite funny to think about in hindsight. At any rate, the garbage in our kitchen has now, for reasons I don’t fully understand, been living without a lid for about a week. While this would normally not pose any serious risk, our little one has proved that a lidless receptacle is a dangerous thing indeed.
Recently our son has been playing with the garbage. He’ll take things out of the garbage (tea bags, egg shells, produce, etc.) and run around with them as prized artifacts. While that is somewhat weird it kind of fits in with the idea of children liking the empty boxes more than the gifts they contained. We’ve certainly found that to be true during his birthday as well as Christmas. At any rate, I finally found a compelling reason as to why he does this. After days of being confused and shocked by what he had obtained and brought into the living room I decided to hide out and watch him when he thought I was away.
It turns out that the motivation wasn’t exploration, like I first though, but rather the continuation of a game. One of the gifts he got for Christmas was a child-sized basketball and hoop. This put very clearly into his mind the idea of things going inside and/or through other things. The couple of times I’ve followed him secretly revealed that he would first through a ball into the garbage and then, in an effort to pull it out, would find other things and lose track of his original objective (the garbage is just a bit shorter than he is). Needless to say, we’re in the market for a lid.