Coming from a religious background where nobody gets paid to do anything, I was taught early and well that group gatherings were never really over until the place was cleaned up. However, this message doesn’t get through to everyone. So, at the end of every function, it was always my family and a handful of other families putting away chairs and running the vacuum cleaner. Which I resented a lot. It bothered me that other people were allowed to make a big mess and a small crew of us with uptight parents would have to clean it up. Then I became a parent myself and heard my kids doing the same griping. One time after our church group attended a baseball game, I made my children pick up trash so that we wouldn’t leave a bad impression in the community. They hated it and I remembered being the kid of a cleaner-upper. But somebody has to keep the place running even if others benefit by being lazy. I thought of this at storytime 
the other day. The sweet librarian is big pregnant and starting to show the strain of combining excessive cheerfulness and procreation. It always makes me sad when parents and kids rush off and leave the craft-time devastation behind for her to take care of. Unfortunately, it’s just the way communities seem to work. When reading Henry Pluckrose’s Ants, I couldn’t help but feel kinship with those worker ants. It’s thankless work, but somebody has to do it.http://catalog.tempe.gov:90/search~S7?/sSisters./ssisters/25%2C-1%2C0%2CE/exact&FF=ssmall+world&1%2C4%2C
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