Trashed Can

Trashed Can

My city of residence just gifted its denizens sleek new trash cans. As rubbish bins go, mine is the cat’s meow: neon green cabriolets with glossy black treaded tires the diameter of dinner plates. When the day came to dump my old bin, I realized that I had no clue how to accomplish that goal. I mean, how on Earth do I tell the trash man to trash my trashcan in addition to my trashcan’s contents? Sure, I could tape a note to it, but South Florida’s vitriolic summer elements would surely bleach it, soak it, or whisk it away (likely within minutes). I tried cramming the old can into its usurper, but the old can bottomed out ¾ths of the way down. See, larger wheels demand larger wheel wells. In short, my tricked out new trash can’s aesthetic upgrade came at the expense of utilitarian profundity.

“Screw it,” I said, “I’ll leave the trash can out long as it takes my neighborhood’s perennially patrolling pickers to make off with it. “Pickers,” for those not in the know, are those old, decrepit dudes who haul loosely-tethered trash heaps with their old, decrepit pickup trucks. To pickers, an item’s worth is dictated solely by its ease of acquisition. Raw materials are venerated to the same degree as fully realized evolutionary apexes. Neither obsolescence nor oxidation justify allowing effluvia to reach its final destination. Pickers can find treasure in MacGuyver’s trash!

Epilogue

Turns out, much to my chagrin, that even “pickers” respect the social contract too much to abscond with a household’s wastebin, no matter how sultry the seduction. Following a 48-hour stretch during which all but the wind ignored my dormant bin, I settled for decommissioning the outmoded contraption.

I dragged the relic to a corner of my property so remote I sometimes forget to mow it. I upturned the relic, lest pooled rainwater make a Club Med for mosquitos of it. There, this casualty of human ingenuity will linger in suspended animation for the foreseeable future. Anyone know if Oscar the Grouch is in the market for a 2nd home?