Am I raising a dumpster diving kid?

I paid for my first year of college on the profits I made from “bottle picking” as a child. 

I grew up on a not very well traveled road out in the country.  Every once in awhile in the summer, we kids would go out with garbage bags and collect the bottles and cans that people had thrown in the ditch. 

Our family didn’t buy much soda or booze so we didn’t have bottles to recycle from home.  I never realized that this was something that “city people” thought was homeless people behavior until I moved to the city myself.

It’s much the same in my own household today, although we do have milk and cream containers to recycle and mama’s wobbly pop bottles, the profit from which I give to the youngest kid in an effort for him to be aware that recycling not only helps the environment but can provide a little bit of spending money too.

But there’s a few events in the last couple of weeks that have made me wonder if I haven’t taught him too well.  If, in fact, he’s going too far in his frugal ways – descending into the lower depths of frugality by essentially “dumpster diving.”

A couple of weeks ago, I took my son and his friend out to a movie: How to Train a Dragon – which was actually pretty good.  OK, I admit it, I just love listening to Gerard Butler’s voice.  Seriously, if you haven’t seen Dear Frankie, do yourself a favor and watch it.  It’s a 10 kleenex movie for this bawl baby – the XXX fantasy movie for single moms everywhere (and all available on youtube) here.: 

Ahem – back from our commercial break – bear with me, my nose is running…

As we were leaving the theater, my son spotted a 90% full bag of popcorn and cotton candy in one of the aisles.  Much to my horror, he wanted to take it and keep it, and was as excited as if he had found a $10 bill on the floor. 

I don’t know what was going on in my head because I let him keep it – and eat it!  Clearly we’re going to have to have a talk about germs in my family.

Since he’s been taking juice boxes for his lunch, I’ve repeatedly nagged (yes, nagged) the kid to not throw them in the garbage when they’re empty but to put them in the recycling container at school so they can make the profit off them to help build the playground.  (Mini rant here – why should kids/parents have to fund raise to build a playground for children at their school – can’t they buy some used equipment at least?) 

Yesterday when he came home from school, he proceeded to pull about 20 juice box containers out of his backpack. 

“Where did those come from?” I asked.

“Oh I picked some of them up off the ground” he replied.

“All of those?  That’s a lot!”

“And I asked my friends to give me all of their empty juice boxes too.”

Eek!  Where have I gone wrong?

Where is the imaginary line drawn that should not be crossed?  Or is he just exercising his entrepreneurial skills?

In the world that I grew up in, lots of kids picked bottles and we didn’t think we were too good for that.  Today, teenagers and most adults won’t hold onto their bottles and would sooner throw them into the garbage or onto the ground rather than make the effort to take them in. 

Is this just the first step down the slippery slope towards actual dumpster diving for my son? 

Or are society’s perceptions of people doing simple things like picking up bottles to make a few bucks by recycling them wrong? 

Will attitudes like this leave us with a dirtier, poorer, “entitlement” society?

Would you do something like pump gas for a living or work at McDonalds rather than declare bankruptcy or walk away from a mortgage if you couldn’t find a job in your field?  Or are you “too good” for that?

Oh, and we both pick up pennies off the ground too. 

Found money is the best kind.