Greening Pains

We've fallen into a bit of a rut. My son loves the vending machines, the ones at Key Food, the ones outside the deli on the corner of 16th and Prospect Park West, the one down from Thai Tony's.

I can relate. There's the joy of fitting one, or even two carefully designed and minted quarters into slots that fit them perfectly, metal to metal. Then the turning of the handle, the gears working slowly, a reassuring bit of resistance against your hand. After the gears have turned fully and the works release, you hear the little bundle of surprise bump down behind the door (hopefully). When you lift up the little metal hatch, there's always that hint of anxiety - will it really be there? The reward for the effort is retrieved (mine!) and then, usually, there's... disappointment. But still, there's the hope, the myth, that really cool stuff will come out of there next time.

Cool stuff, poisonous stuff. That's what I had to tell my son. We should no longer spend any quarters on these little prizes that may well be painted with lead and other poisons, that most likely come from factories that dump some pretty evil chemicals into their local water supply. Places where people are so desperate they have to blind themselves to the effects of their actions. For that matter, I tried to convince him, we should pass on the gum, too, because not only is it bad for you because of the sugar but it could be tainted with whatever poison residues might have been left in the machines from other things.

Yesterday was his last time to get a trinket at Key Food. He got a fake gold chain, which I took from him immediately, saying, that's exactly the kind of thing you have to watch out for. Fool's Gold. On the way to the ATM, we pass the magazine rack. I see that on the cover of the New York Times there's a story about the tainted trinkets brought here from China. I read the headline to him, a little too loudly.

Sometimes, it stinks to be right.