Monday, September 12, 2005

West Virginian Waste

I received a past due notice today from my garbage collection company. Normally a past due notice might bother me, although this was just an issue of a misplaced bill during our trip to South Dakota, but this notice came with an easter egg so delicious it made up for the reprimand. There was a short blurb about how much I owed, an apology if I'd already sent a payment, a bit about how to pay right away if I was worried about the whole thing, a "Sincerely" from the collections department, and then, out of nowhere, the notice:

"Note: WV law requires proper disposal of solid waste."

There weren't any warnings for other states. It wasn't being sent from West Virginia. Just this simple message appended to the end as a surety that I wouldn't forget. Now I make fun of West Virginia quite a bit, solely because it's a jab at Christy - but Christy...they have to make it more difficult. If your fellow (at least at one time) West Virginians are going to improperly dispose of solid waste to the extent that they receive a special reprimand on all Waste Managment past due notices, well, this tells me a few things. 1.) West Virginians are either very poor or don't like to pay their bills and 2.) they have a habit of putting solid waste where it should not be, possibly to offset item number one. These facts in no way dispell the myths most people associate with West Virginia. If I get a social security summary with the warning "Note: WV law prohibits marrying your first cousin" you are never going to hear the end of it.

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