I first noticed the cup on the right back in June, 2006. It didn’t surprise me that it could hang on during one of the worse droughts north Texas has seen in decades. Since then, however, we’ve seen many heavy rains of significant duration. Gulley-washers, even. No, better make that toad-stranglers.

I’m reminded of a line from Daffy Duck

I’ve heard of stick-to-it-iveness, but how sticky can you get?

Every day on my way to work, I check this storm drain for what has become a steady, albeit confounding presence in my life. When the light at the intersection is green, I catch a glimpse as I scuttle by on my way to the office, just enough to confirm it’s still there. On the rare occasion that I’m first in line at a red light, I get a good look and wonder, How does it hang on like that? Is it by now bottomless, so that water passes through it unchecked to the depths below?

This cup is like Rocky Balboa; it keeps hanging on long past its prime and somehow I always end up cheering for it. Unlike the fictional heavyweight champ, the cup is very real, and it remains stoic, oblivious to the thousands of self-important wanderers of the world that pass by it each day.

Its new buddy, that white cup on the left, has been there at least two weeks. I don’t think it will last as long. How could it? Surely no more than one miracle cup can inhabit one storm drain at a time. Though I’ve seen no research on such a phenomenon, the statistics must be stacked against it.

Should I see it as a testament to the cup’s grit, or as proof that the lamentable Adopt-a-Highway litter control program isn’t quite cutting the muster?

The cigarette butts fall by the wayside. Candy wrappers wriggle past, on their way to an unhappy finish in the swill of humanity.

Meanwhile the cup remains, its blue straw sticking forth like a middle finger saying, “Screw you, world, I’m not going anywhere. Send forth your grimy gray waters. I shall not falter.”

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