Trash Talk

Garbage men are curious creatures. They are always nice to me when I see them in the morning. Yesterday one said to me that I looked very pretty today and he followed it up with “but I bet you look pretty every day.” It was nice to hear.

When I lived on Eagle Street in Greenpoint, I would see this one garbage man often. He would always say hello or comment on the weather. I would smile and say hello back, make small chat, you know the kind you can only have while walking past someone without stopping.

I moved away, three years passed, and then I saw him again randomly outside a diner. He remembered me, even saying “you used to live on Eagle.” What a great memory.

My uncle Ronnie was a garbage man. He found two puppies inside a thick Hefty bag on the streets of East New York. He heard whimpers just before the metal thing smooshed the contents of the bin.

Lifesaver. This is funny if you knew my uncle Ronnie.

He brought them to my house and my parents let my sister and I have one. We named her Pookie. I watched her give birth to five puppies five years later. And three years after that I locked myself in the bathroom in hysterics when I found out my dad gave her away after she bit a couple of neighborhood kids.

That was really mean.

Not Pookie’s actions, but dad’s.

I’ve never seen a garbage woman. Yet, by the law of averages, it’s safe to say that men are the ones who most often take out the garbage. But essentially garbage men are part of a clean up, which, again, by the law of averages, isn’t most men’s specialty.

And maybe my view of men is a little messed up. Not all, just some.

And you know how if you do something all day at work, it’s often the last thing you want to do at home?

I wonder if garbage men take out their own garbage.

I would ask but it would require me to stop.