Look In On Me

You know as a rule, of the approximately 6.94 billion people on this planet, most are pretty easy to tolerate. That may be because 99.999% of them I will never meet. I guess that most of the ones that I do meet are nice enough in their own way. Each and every one of us has some redeeming quality and we all have some God given talent. I am still looking for mine, but I am beginning to think that being drop dead gorgeous isn’t it. Oh well.

There is one guy whose God given talent is being a complete and utter asshole! Yep, he is my garbage man. Isn’t it funny how his job title and the title that I gave him are one and the same? He spends his day picking up and hauling away refuse and really he should just jump in the back of the truck and compress him.

I know that all of you tree huggers are saying “But Ken, how can you hate someone that you have never seen?” Good question, but you don’t need to see the wind to know that it stinks. You can’t see love but you can sure feel it. The same goes for lust, but that is going somewhere else entirely. No, I hate this guy and I think he hates me. Let me explain.

Quite a few years ago when we moved into this house, there were a number of things that came with it. The previous owner was a wife beating welder, so there was a lot of bits and pieces of metal in the garage (I still have them by the way) pieces of wood and a galvanized garbage can that had seen better days. It was dented and dirty, the lid was missing, its rim was beginning to separate and quite frankly, it stunk. I called it “Lucky”.

Well, I washed Lucky and pounded out some of the worst dents till it looked not as good as new, but like a well used and well loved member of the family. I only used Lucky for solid non smelling garage waste which was wood and saw dust, the odd bit of garden stuff and things that blew onto the property from afar. Lucky and I got along pretty well with the garbage guy for years, and then I have to guess that the nice garbage guy retired and the asshole took over his route.

I began to notice that week after week Lucky was getting more and deeper dents, as if he were violently smashed down on the edge of the trucks hopper. It was almost as if Lucky offended this guy somehow. Every week I began to hammer out Lucky’s dent, and the following week I would hammer out the new dent. It was kind of fun knowing that I was pissing off a total stranger who would smash Lucky down all the harder when he saw that he was back again.

I kind of thought that this would go on indefinitely, but one day I came home from work and Lucky was gone! It hadn’t been terribly windy, and no one in their right mind would steal him. Where could he be? That son-of-a-bitch threw him in the garbage truck with all of the garbage! Lucky was gone! I called the city and reported that their garbage guy had thrown out my garbage can. I couldn’t tell them that my “Lucky” was missing, for obvious reasons. I felt like a modern day Judas. They said that the city would replace it, but I told them, that wasn’t the point. You can’t replace a member of the family just like that. Can you?

I just now figured out that the garbage guy wanted to only handle bags! Hmmmm.

This garbage guy went on to rip off the cover of a neighbours trash bin because it opened the wrong way. He would pick up ten bundles of tree clippings but not a double bag of ceiling tiles. He once opened a plastic bag and took out a bike tire. Every time it rained I would roll up cardboard to look like a paint can, and put it in the garbage bag just so this dick would take the time in the rain to make sure there wasn’t a paint can in there. He was a dick, and probably still is.

I suppose that the old sayings are true, “What goes around, comes around.” “You reap what you sow.” The city went to the black cart garbage collection system. They needed far fewer garbage men, and I hope that my guy being younger was one of the first to lose his job. I can picture him working the night shift at a gas bar, selling chocolate bars to stoned teenagers that would take two hours to decide which bar they wanted. Now, at the very least, because of the new system there are no more early days for the garbage guys. They are now terribly over worked. It is sad for most of them, but not for the dick that crushed Lucky.

If you are in garbage can heaven Lucky, look in on me from time to time...