Crash Goes The Breaking Glass
Was I excited about getting a colorful new Rappahannock county tag for the Jeep windshield? You bet I was. With the Badgers long knocked out the NCAA tournament, what else did I have to be excited about? Naw really, I was over the Badger thing. Only to have the Longhorns knocked out, then the Aggies. I'm going to root for the Hoyas this evening, which clearly, may not be to their advantage. Go Tarheels.
I scraped off last year's tag, a woefully sad looking misprint of a county sticker, and applied the cheerful multi-colored 07 logo, carefully lining it up just so with the complimentary-colored inspection sticker to its left. If I would just wash the Jeep, still slimed over with white filmy road gunk from the recent but not that recent 8 hour drive through highway hell froze over, I would have a vehicle envied by many. Especially that great majority driving around with bland state required stickers.
I was on my way to the dump. As you may or may not know, as spring approaches and the temperatures rise, you cannot use your garage as a refrigerated way station for storing garbage for weeks at a time. You have to get rid of that garbage, take it on down the road. Which is a bummer sometimes but look on the bright side regarding the spring thaw. Those paint brushes you forgot to clean in early winter, left in buckets of water which froze solid for two months? You can now clean those up and get some use from them.
So, like a soccer mom with a Jeep full of smelly kids, off I went to the dump, proudly displaying my new sticker, which is also required for legal dumping. I have been corrected for improper dumping protocol on more than one occasion. I am not a rebel. I try not to defy authority. I do not like to make mistakes and then have them pointed out to me like I'm some mis-fitted, ill-bred, smelly offspring of a negligent soccer mom. That there is what I call a little metaphor inversion. Given the choice between being a soccer mom or a smelly bag of trash, I choose not to choose. I can be both.
That guy at the dump is just doing his job. I am not faulting him for that. Still, he makes me nervous. You think I don't go to the dump as often as I should because I'm lazy? Ok, fair enough. But also the reason I don't go is because I'm intimidated. What else can I do wrong at the dump that I haven't yet done wrong? If that guy is on duty he's going to find something. Here's an example of what goes through my mind. Besides the trash, I am loading up recyclables--a few beer, wine and liquor bottles, about forty or fifty pounds worth, all neatly sorted by color, and I'm worried is this guy gonna think I'm a booze hound. I work through that by describing myself to myself, and the situation, in such a way that I come out not looking like a complete drunken loser. Sounds good to me, and I am feeling strong and confident and full of hope. The stack of newspapers has amongst it several plastic wrapped sections from the Sunday papers. Should plastic really go into the big rail car dedicated to newsprint? Should I unwrap these sections? Is the guy going to see me throwing this questionable contraband into the rail car? My armpits itch and I get flush in the face just thinking about it.
I don't want you think I spend all day thinking about this stuff, no, no, no, just part of it. I'm at the dump now, slinging the little thirteen gallon white with red drawstring trash bags into the sectioned off pits like I'm some kind of jazzy big city garbage man with style coming out my ears instead of what I actually have which is just those little bristly hairs, and I am doing nothing wrong, but still feel like I'm being watched. And this is because I am being watched. The guy is over there in his booth with the tinted windows, but he can't touch me because I'm golden. I am the master of trash hauling protocol, except for that plastic around some of the newsprint, and, did I remember to take off the caps from my liquor bottles? I think I did. I think I did take the caps, and that one cork, from my liquor bottles.
Oh shit, here he comes. He's making an inspection run. I feel myself straightening my posture, sticking out my chest, sucking in the gut. Sir, yes sir. He can't touch me, I already told you this, I'm golden. I move over to the bottle dumpsters and risk herniating a disc by lifting the large plastic totes of bottles over my head and dumping them, crash, crash goes the breaking glass.
On the way home the stench of spilt beer residue in the bottom of the totes makes me think of spring.
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