Trash Talking

 

 

When I lived in Madison, Wisconsin I got my hair cut at chic downtown salon a few blocks from our apartment near the Capitol. A young black man cut my hair, and he gave me my first stylish short hair cut reminiscent of Hale Berry’s. He wasn’t a hipster with an on fire cool factor about him. He was a regular guy who wore a button down white shirt and plain front khaki pants almost better than Matthew McConaughey in A Time to Kill. He didn’t fit the stereotype of a hair stylist at a chrome paneled salon. As we chatted and got to know each other, the told me about his lineage. He was the only person in his family to finish high school, though several others earned their GED. He graduated high school and joined the working ranks of every other man in his family – father, uncles, cousins. He became a garbage man.

I thought he was joking and laughed apprehensively.

He told me he collected trash for many years during Wisconsin’s dreadful winters and mosquito filled summers. He did what he knew and like the rest of his family, he thought it his lot in life. He saw no future better than what his family attained. He wasn’t happy and fulfilled; he was complacent. Something in him clicked that he could not explain. He wanted more. He wanted a job with flexibility, creativity, people interaction, and pizazz. He needed stability to care for the family he wanted to have and a means to break the cycle that had plagued his family who was struggling every month. Most of all, he told me he wanted dignity.

And so he went to school to learn how to cut hair. He created a life for himself that no one in his family could understand. He lived with taunts for his chosen career, a cruel paradox of losing face among his family while gaining dignity in the public’s eye. I think of him every week as the trash truck moans through my neighborhood. I see the men working as people, not faceless orange suited laborers.

It’s trash day today. Of all the things I take for granted, trash removal is the biggest. I mean think about it, I eat my sons’ Almond Joys from their Halloween plastic pumpkins, I toss the wrappers in the trash, and cover them up with some coffee grounds to hide the evidence. The kitchen trash bin gets full. I tie up the bag and take it to my even larger trash bin by the garage. Then once a week I take the big bin to the curb. It’s even on wheels so the only hardship is not knocking my car’s rearview mirrors when I drag the trash down the driveway. I admittedly find hardship when I do this in the rain, heat, cold, snow. Mac Daddy usually deals with the trash, and I grumble when his business takes him out of town on trash day.

I am sounding spoiled.

I like things to be tidy and orderly. I abhor a mess and have no patience for grime. I am constantly wiping things up around here, especially little boys’ pee from the damndest places. I try very hard to be mindful of the environment, but the one thing I cannot give up are paper towels. Wiping down a counter with a used sponge or rag makes me squeamish. As for the pee, that is a wipe and toss, not wipe and wash, operation. In all other aspects we really do generate less trash than most people. I use reusable containers for lunch boxes and I don’t buy anything in snack sizes. We recycle everything possible, even clothing price tags. Even when we lived in an apartment without recycling facilities, Mac Daddy and I stock piled our recycling and took it to the plant every week. We do the same when we go to the beach if the house we rent doesn’t have a recycling bin. We are not wasters around here (unless you count wasting time). I walk Lark around the neighborhood everyday so I can tell you with certainty that our house has less trash than most other homes, and our recycling bin is fuller. I shudder to see cardboard boxes stuffed into overflowing trash bins.

Despite our attempt to save the planet in our own small ways, we do generate trash. I’m not the kind of girl who thinks her trash doesn’t stink so I am grateful to the people who collect our garbage every week, especially when the elements don’t cooperate. The trash guys in my neighborhood seem to be good natured, friendly fellows. They greet me with earnest smiles and kindly guide me past their truck when I take Bird and Deal to school. I always say thank you and greet them, but it’s not enough. I don’t know if I can tip them or show them my gratitude in other ways.

Every time I see them I want to acknowledge their work and service to our community. I want to tell them about my hair stylist and how his simple story told to me over a series of cuts and trims gave me perspective and insight I would have otherwise never had. I want to tell them I don’t take them for granted. They’ll never see this post, but it’s my way to tell the world that we owe a great debt to the trash collectors who make our worlds tidy. They take our trash and soiled disposable bits that comprise our consumerist habits and wipe our lives clean. In effect, they make it even easier for us to take even more granted.