Sponge Superpowers

Yuan Yuan called from her tour yesterday, and gave me an earful of righteousness about her uncultured clients who throw their garbage on the ground whenever they happened to be disposed to dispose of it, regardless of whether there's a trash can within 2 light years or 2 feet of them. All right, you got me, the 2 light years case wasn't actually tested using the scientific method.

Whenever this kind of thing happens, I feel as giddy as gossip girl who just got back to New York and first thing she sees when she opens the newspaper is the rumor she started while vacationing on Alpha Centauri B. Yuan Yuan is a human sponge for things I say, behaviors I exhibit, opinions I bray. She's like a gravitational vortex addicted to the nonsense that's accumulated in my star system. And of course, to her, they're all historical documents.

When I first met Yuan Yuan, I spent a good 3 months scolding her for throwing her trash on the ground of the street. The change didn't come naturally to her, though it wasn't for lack of trying: we would be riding home on our bike, her sitting behind me on the little platform behind the seat, and she would lean out, forcing me to turn the bike in that direction, and then she would attempt to slam dunk whatever trash she magically produced during the last 5 minutes, into the nearest trash can. More often than not, I would hear "damn, that was so close! Oh well, we tried our best." I would then give her mixed signals by not stopping to force her to clean it up.

It's been years now, and I still can't say she's broken the habit completely. But the righteousness about other people doing is now completely Pavlovian for her. I can't decide if this is an upgrade or a downgrade.