Old habits die hard. Back in the middle school, my students were putting pop can tabs in a big bottle to donate to the Ronald McDonald House. Each classroom was competing with the others to see which one got the party at the end of the year. The room with the most pop can tabs was the winner. Since my students had the teacher who drank the most Diet Coke, we were far ahead of the others. Yay, me.

I haven’t taught there for almost four years now, but I still save pop can tabs from force of habit. I tear off the tab before I ever begin to drink, because once thirty years ago the tab came loose as I was drinking and I choked on it and panicked because, you know, DEATH BY POP CAN TAB? It happens all the time! So I tear it off and put it in a glass bowl in my kitchen, and then I drink the diet coke.

When the bowl gets full of pop can tabs, I dump the tabs into a big trash bag.

Tonight, the bowl was full, and I realized that I had yet another big trash bag packed full to the very top of pop can tabs. It’s the third since I quit.

I’ll be on the main campus this fall, and there are always big bottles in the corridors for people to drop pop can tabs into. I’m going to start bringing a few hundred each day until I get rid of all these pop can tabs in trash sacks taking up all the room in my casserole dish cabinet.

I tear the tab off the can when I drink diet Coke elsewhere, too. Every time I do laundry, the tabs come out of my jeans pockets and get stuck in the dryer filter. I’ve been known to pick them up off the ground.

Because, you know, every little tab weighs SOMETHING, and it all adds up.