Classic Rant #1,216 (May 28, 2014): Out With the Garbage

No, I still do not have a car in my possession.

Evidently, the dealership could not get a "final approval," and thus, I have no car.

Supposedly, the final approval will come today.

If it doesn't, I am back to square one, because I will pull out of the deal and look somewhere else.

Bad karma, they say.

Anyway, as I was preparing to write today's Rant, I thought that a good subject to express my opinions on would be garbage, because I think that that is how I am being treated since the moment the other car hit my car and turned my life upside down.

Let's talk about garbage.

No matter our standing in life or where we live or who we are, we all generate garbage, things we don't need anymore, or never did need.

It all goes into the garbage.

How we get rid of it has changed, at least for me, over the years.

The first time I can remember garbage is when I was a little kid.

We had the metal can in the corner of our kitchen.

The first time I remember actually using the garbage was when my mom tried to pull a fast one over me.

I must have been five or six years old.

I am a very picky eater, and I hate lamb chops.

My mother gave me lamb chops, told me it was steak, and with one bite, I knew that she had been telling me a little white lie.

I remember very vividly going over to the garbage and dumping all the lamb chops into the metal can.

Later on, when we moved to Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, garbage became a bigger part of my life.

It was my job to get rid of the garbage, and what was unique about this place was that there was an incinerator chute on each and every floor of the development.

So all you had to do is collect all of your garbage, go to the door that the chute was behind, open the door, open the chute, and throw your garbage down the chute.

Simple and easy.

Every once in a while, flames would shoot up, and you had to watch that you didn't get burned. But all in all, it was fun to take out the garbage, or at least almost fun.

Then we moved to Long Island, and garbage wasn't fun anymore.

You had to collect it, put it in trash pails that went from metal to heavy plastic over the years, and put all the garbage out on the curb.

The problem is that stray animals--cats, dogs, beavers, squirrels, and heaven knows what else--rip open the pails and devour the contents.

We have used so many different devices over the years to put out the garbage safely, including specially treated garbage bags and bungee chords to tie up the garbage securely.

But the whole process is a real pain the butt.

After I am done here, I have to take out some garbage. I have to put it in the specially treated bags--which cost an arm and a leg to boot--and put it in a pail. I have to make sure that the top is securely on so no animals can get to it.

No, garbage is not fun anymore for me. It hasn't been for more than 40 years, but it is seemingly a necessity of life that a few times a week, the garbage has to be taken out.

Hopefully, after today, the succeeding days that I have to take out the garbage to the curb will find me looking at my car, which will be parked a few feet away from the pails.

That will make taking out the garbage all that much more satisfying.

All I see now is an empty space.