Throughout my childhood, both my parents and teachers would often tell me that I had to respect public workers’ jobs, but I have never really understood it. For some reason, in my head, I always thought that unless the person had to sit in the office for a whole day, the jobs were not hard.  However, I later found out that I was wrong. I have to admit, I  never respected the efforts of public workers until I became one myself. I was a pretty lazy person, so I would often throw trash on the street because in my head, holding the garbage for five more minutes until I would reach the next trash can was too complicated and unnecessary. It's not that I would purposely litter, and of course I would choose to put the garbage in the can if I saw one, but more often than not, there were no trash cans around me. In the times when I littered, I never even thought to blame myself for littering since I always thought that other people would litter too, and me being the only person to not litter wouldn’t change much. It’s sort of like when you think, why would anyone be vegetarian if the cow is still going to be killed and some random guy is just going to eat two burgers instead of one? At least that was the way I was before one day, when it all changed forever.

         It happened when I was seven; the first day of elementary school I was picking up trash for a whole day and it wasn’t in any way my choice I truly believe that day of picking up trash made me a better person and shifted my perspective on things. On that day, me and my friends all gathered  at the door in front of school and we were  talking to each other. As you would expect, a lot of the parents gave their children candies to eat, and after eating them we just decided to throw the wrappers on the ground. Later, I would find out that our teacher saw that, but she didn’t say anything at the time. For the first day I obviously decided to dress up nicely and wear my brand new running shoes that my parents bought for me just a day before. I did that because I thought there would be nothing to get them dirty in school. It was raining that day. After we got a tour around the building, we went to our classroom. We sat down and my teacher, Mrs. Crawford, started to write something on the board. You would think she would be writing down the regular stuff like her name, the date, and the class theme, however, she wrote down one word: “RESPECT”. I was confused. I mean, I already knew how to spell and I could totally recognize the word that was written, but the reason for writing it was what was throwing me off. To my surprise, Mrs. Crawford was not saying a word. I would later figure out that she wanted to catch our attention and make us quiet down, but more, to let the word sink in. After a good two minutes, the voice of Mrs. Crawford revived the dead silence. She read out the word, in case any of us hadn’t yet learned how to. I saw some faces with an expression of realization around, but that was not what I was thinking at the moment. There was a simple question: “ Why respect?” Mrs. Crawford interrupted me by saying: “For the first class today we are going to go outside.” Now I was really confused, but I wasn’t worried anymore. As you would expect, every first grader would be extremely happy to go outside with his friends and there would be nothing else in his head after he heard that command. Unexpectedly, we weren’t led by the teacher, and instead, Mrs. Crawford came out five minutes later than we did. She had numerous pairs of gloves, a bunch of brooms, and a roll of trash bags in her hands. I was now slowly coming back to my previous thoughts…

I knew Mrs. Crawford was a nice teacher from the first moment. You know how you can tell if a person is kind or not by the way they walk, the way they speak and sound, and most importantly by the look of their eyes. She asked us to put the gloves on and take a broom. I thought to myself,  there is no way the first thing we will be asked to do is to clean out the trash. Apparently, there was a way. Ms. Crawford said nothing except that she saw a lot of candy wrappers on the ground. She didn’t say that she knew it was us, but in the depth of our hearts we all realized that she saw the perpetrators, but she didn’t want to embarrass us. At that moment, I thought about everything in a split second: about my new shoes, about the rain, about the trash, and about all of the candy wrappers I have thrown, and lastly, about that word on the board. I mean, of course we didn’t know that it was allowed to say no to the teacher, so we put on a pair of gloves, took a broom and a trash bag, and went to work. I was so happy when I saw the brooms since I did not want to use my hands. I didn't even think I needed gloves. Soon, I would realize I was wrong. There was a little lawn between the street and the sidewalk. The strong wind that day brought all of the garbage to that piece of lawn and all of the garbage got stuck in the tall grass. First, I used the broom to clean out all of the little wrappers and leaves from the cement sidewalk. I realized what people meant when they said to try to stand in other people’s shoes. Even though I was in my brand new shoes, I felt like I was in someone else’s. When the sidewalk was clean, it came down to cleaning out the trash on the lawn. The grass was tall and all the wrappers, cups, and plastic bags were stuck deep. I tried the broom, but it was useless. Now I was glad that I decided to keep the gloves on. I went in with my hands. We had to bend down and walk to the trash bag, back and forth. It was tiring and my legs were getting a little sore; The first time my legs got sore not from playing games. However, I only felt that the next morning; I wasn’t thinking about myself then. I was thinking about other workers who would have to do this job every day because of people like me and my friends. After working for a whole day, they would probably feel tired if not more than that. Until now, I felt like I still remembered every single wrapper I threw out. At that time, my shoes got wet and muddy, my shirt was soaking, however, I didn’t care. I was imagining how nice it would be for all those sanitation workers to just relax and see a clean street wherever they went, And at that moment I realized that I didn’t want to litter a single time anymore. I learned to respect other people. Sometimes, I still think how interesting it was that Mrs. Crawford never even explained the true meaning or purpose of that word she wrote down. It really sank in by itself. Picking up the last wrapper and taking the trash bag inside, I swore that I wouldn’t ever litter again. Ever since then, for the last eight years, I held my trash in my hand until I saw that trash can in front of me.