Resolution

I woke up yesterday morning at about 7:20am to the dulcet sounds of the garbage truck backing into our alley. A pile of trash bags had accumulated over the holidays because no one was around to put them out. And because my New Year's resolution is to stop procrastinating (I've been meaning to work on that for a while but I keep putting it off), I threw on a shirt and some shoes and darted outside with the vigor a man on a mission.

Here's how it works if you haven't put your trash out the night before and the truck's already come: after it passes, you put out your cans as they're getting the rest of the alley's garbage and then they grab yours on their way back out---I'd done it many times before. Piece of cake. So as the truck started to head back out, I locked the gate and went up the stairs to go inside when I heard a loud crunching sound. "Oh, crap."

Both of the trash cans were being dragged along and crushed between the side of the truck and a low wall along our back yard. Plastic wheels were popping off, hard rubber buckling, it was an awful sound---and he just kept going, dragging them along. As I'm standing there half awake, half dressed and taking this all in, one of the trash men yells: "You put them cans out there so we could run over 'em!!?? Huh??"

There was really nothing to say. And besides, I wasn't in the mood to shout over the trashcans, thrashing away in their death throes. But if I was in the mood, I might have said something like: "Yeah, I'm sorry, Mr. Trashman, how silly of me. By the way is your driver BLIND??" After the truck passed and was finished doing its damage, the guy picked up the Rubbermaid remains while shaking his head in my general direction and tossed them in with the rest of the garbage.

It's great to make New Year's resolutions. But if you make haste by trying to make up for lost time, then you might miss a detail or two. Like making sure the trash man SEES that you've sprung out of bed in hopes of making 2007 a year to get things done.