When I moved into my new place I had a tidy and undamaged,
hunter green, City of Charleston trashcan. It sat proudly to the right side of
my off-white town home and just behind my stately blue recycling bin. I rolled
that green trashcan out to the street every Thursday and I waited patiently for
it to be emptied and then I would roll it back to its grassless plot and slowly
fill it again.
Someone on my street is obsessed with the trashcans. As I
roll my can out to the road, so do the other dwellers in shared town homes and we
put our cans in a pod together and leave them there to mingle all day while we’re
all at work. One Thursday evening, I forgot to bring my can back in. I looked
out my window, noted that it was still there next to one other unclaimed can
and I decided I’d grab it in the morning.
And so the next morning I walked to the end of the driveway
and discovered that someone had taken my lovely green trashcan and left me with
a filthy, green-brown trashcan with a missing lid, broken handle, and a hole in
the bottom. I looked up at neighboring houses in outrage. “Who did this?” I
wondered with scorn. I scanned all the visible cans in the area and I saw my
can. I saw my gleaming clean can sitting beside a little pink house next to my
building. You see, the cans make quite a racket rolling down the driveway. In
my neurotic fashion, I feared the Can Snatcher hearing me approach their
home with their awful trashcan. They would run down their front steps and wrap
their body around my happy trashcan and refuse to give it up. So I decided to
be the bigger person and I rolled that dirt-ball can up to my house and parked
it in the dirt patch with a look of disdain and for the last five months I have
used the broken can which has splintered and snapped even more since then.
Just a few weeks ago, on Thursday morning, a shiny white
City of Charleston truck was following behind our neighborhood garbage truck.
This truck was replacing worn- out trashcans with brand spanking new, never been
used, still smell like the plastic factory, hunter green, city trashcans. I
saluted my worn out trashcan as I pulled out of my driveway, delighted to find
my fresh one in the Can Pod when I got home from work that day. Indeed, they
took away the dirty can and left in it’s place a can better then my first can.
A can that was now rightfully mine. And I rolled that shiny green can up to my
house and I parked it with pride in front of my recycling bin. “Check out that
can!” I said to no one, bobbing my head as I circled around it and I sashayed
inside with glee, pleased to have a trashcan that accurately represented my
cleanliness and overall look of organization and mindfulness. Yes, I read all
of this from people’s trash cans.
And when I woke up the next morning I proudly looked out my
window. Out and down at my new trashcan. My new trashcan was gone. My eyes
darted to the Can Snatchers yard.
The Snatcher had three brand new cans corralled on the side of his
house. My head jerked back in shock. I marched outside to take a better look
and indeed, the Snatcher had prowled through the night, searching for the folks
that received new trashcans and he gathered them and piled them up in his yard.
He was however, polite enough to replace the stolen cans with other cans of
satisfactory condition. My current trashcan is relative to my original can,
clean and functional.
I saw the Trashcan Bandit this afternoon. I’d just gotten
home from work and I heard the distinct sound of one of the cans rolling by. This
sound was out of place as today is a Tuesday and there are no pick up services on
Tuesdays. I held back my curtains with my index finger and peered out at the
driveway. There was the Bandit, in broad daylight and he had his filthy paws on
my neighbors recycling bin.
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