One Man's Trash

One Man's Trash

(A true story about death and a dollar)

This is what it’s like to wake up in a garbage bin.  It’s confusing.   The first thing you notice is that there’s a lot of beeping, so in some ways it’s like waking up in bed.  Beep.  Beep. Beep. The difference is that the beeping in a garbage bin isn’t an alarm clock; it’s the sound of a refuse truck shifting into reverse.  It’s the noise that tells you that you’re going to die soon.  When you wake up in a dumpster and you’re just seconds away from being compacted, a lot of things run through your head really quickly.  I can’t die like this.  Homeless people die like this.  Will I still get The Coveted Dollar if I’m dead?

It smells like banana peels and cans of beer that only got half finished, but you really can’t focus much on the smell because the two blue forks on the back of a huge oil-stained trash truck are getting ready to thoughtlessly dump you into a compactor on the back.  From the sounds of it - clanking metal, huge crushing wheels, whooshing hydraulics - the trash truck has just the right amount of muscle required to squash the entire contents of this garbage bin into an empty box of Honey Nut Cheerios. 

This isn’t a joke anymore. Last night when you nestled into a heap of apartment-building rubbish, and everyone was laughing and cheering you on, it was funny.  You did it because…well, because you were caught up in the moment. You knew if you took the dare and slept in a dumpster it would be the kind of legendary act you and your band mates could share a hearty laugh at over a beer 30 years down the road.  Showalter, remember that time we were on tour in Illinois and you slept in that dumpster at some apartment building for The Coveted Dollar?  Dude, that was hilarious!

Last night it was funny.  But that was before there was a giant trash truck with greasy valves and hydraulic hoses reversing its way into your makeshift bed. When that hungry truck deposits you into its posterior you’ll get methodically condensed just like the rest of the trash in it.

Now you're watching a scenario in your mind that makes you want to throw up. 

You see the look on your Mom’s face when they tell her exactly how it was that her son came to fit so nicely into an empty sleeve of Ritz crackers.  You see her knees give out under the weight of losing her son to a dual axle, rear-loading refuse truck.  You see your old man hugging her, rolling his eyes over her shoulder as if he knew you had this coming all along.  That boy has been embarrassing himself ever since he went off to college.  Now he’s gone and embarrassed the whole family…I guess we can finally cut off his stupid hair and dress him in a suit.

Just as you feel the shaking forks latch onto the bin, you hoist yourself up and reach for the lip of the dumpster.  Now that the garbage bin is lifted and tilted you can see the morning sun peeking up over the horizon.  You heave your body upwards hoping the force will be enough to spew you over the top of the dumpster before it topples over and dumps you into what-you’re-hoping-WON’T be your final resting place. And as you realize that it’s probably not going to work and you’re going to die here after all, you start to wonder. 

What the hell am I doing?  You can’t help but wonder because wondering is what people do when they’re about to die. First of all, you wonder when and how your band will find out that you’ve been mangled to death in a tragic trash bin accident.  Secondly, you wonder how they will explain it to your parents.

You see, Mr. and Mrs. Showalter – we have this thing called the Coveted Dollar and it’s…

The coveted what?

Well, it’s this dollar bill that we use to dare each other to do crazy stuff.  Instead of saying, “Hey, I dare you to eat that wet catfood, or I dare you to spend the whole night sleeping in that dumpster – we say Hey, I’ll give you The Coveted Dollar to eat that wet catfood or I’ll give you The Coveted Dollar to spend the whole night sleeping in that dumpster.”  It’s ingenious really, Mr. and Mrs. Showalter – because after someone takes a dare and earns The Coveted Dollar, we write their name, the date, and a brief synopsis of the dare on the actual dollar bill.  That way we can keep of a running record of all the crazy stories we have.   It's an honor when you get The Dollar.

So our son killed himself over a dollar?  One dollar?

No no, Mr. and Mrs. Showalter.  He killed himself over The Coveted Dollar. It’s more than just a dollar.  It’s...

Right right, it’s “coveted.”

Well yes, and you see Joe had The Coveted Dollar at the time because he got it for driving all the way through Iowa with a road-kill raccoon sitting in his lap.  He offered The Dollar to Adam if Adam would just spend the whole night sleeping in that dumpster.  We had no idea that it was dangerous really.  How could we have known that the trash truck would come so early the next morning, or that Adam would be so sound asleep when it did.  We just thought it would be a good story…

So you’re telling us that Adam died in the name of a good story? 

Please, Mr. and Mrs. S, we know it all seems stupid to you but The Coveted Dollar was actually really important to all of us. Those stories we made together were…

When you wake up in a dumpster and realize that a menacing refuse truck is going to devour you soon, it’s amazing the things you think of.  Your sleeping quarter gets lofted up towards the rot-smelling tail end of this giant, and suddenly you’re thinking about the truck your parents gave you back when toy trucks were cool - back before trucks tried to kill you.  It was yellow.  A Tonka truck with black plastic wheels. 

You remember how excited Mom and Dad were to watch you fill the back end with gravel and sand and then roll around the yard.  They laughed at the motor noises you made with your mouth while you leaned your little body over the road you’d dug out in the alleyway behind the garage.  

They grinned at the Tonka-sized pathway you dug out from the alley to the sandbox. Even though your dad loved his grass, he loved you more.  He didn’t complain that you’d torn it up to make your Tonka-truck road. Vroooommmm, you’d say as you pushed it along your path.  Vrooommm! Your dad would say in a much deeper voice. 

You’re only about 3 seconds from a humiliating death, but that’s when it’s easiest to stretch your thoughts out in all directions, right before you die.  While you’re mentally preparing to get crushed, your thoughts elongate in every direction just like the chewing gum that’s now stuck to your arm.  You wish the gum were the grossest thing you were dealing with; currently the trash is shifting around and you’re caked in filth.  It’s one thing to die trying to make a legendary Coveted Dollar story, but there is no dignity in dying atop a bed of moldy pizza crust and crinkled toiled paper.  This is definitely not funny anymore. 

When you were a kid you used to fill the back of that Tonka truck with gravel and sticks and then haul your cargo off to the sandbox where your cats pooped.  You wrecked it into anything you could find along the way, and for each collision some of the yellow paint chipped away.  For every crash the tiny axles loosened a little more.  You would look up at your parents to check their reaction - to see if they approved of you treating your toy this way.   They would smile at you and laugh.  CRAaaashhh! They’d cheer.

Your little friend Shaun also got a Tonka that year.  He was your neighbor so you asked him to bring his truck over to play but he said it was still in the box.  Shaun said his parents told him that it would be a “collector’s item” someday. Whatever that meant.  So there it sat on his shelf, safely packaged in its yellow box with a plastic window displaying its shiny windshield and black wheels. 

Why does he have that truck if he’s not going to play with it?  You asked Mom and Dad.  

Well, Sweetie – he just wants to protect it.

Why?

Maybe Shaun gets just as much pleasure from looking at his truck in perfect condition as you get from taking yours out and rolling it all over the yard and crashing it into everything.  It’s just a different way of enjoying the same gift.  

You didn’t get it.  And it wasn’t just Shaun’s Tonka truck.  All his stuff got protected.  His UpperDeck baseball cards were packed neatly into plastic sleeves while your George Bretts and Frank Thomases were clothes-pinned to the spokes of the Huffy bicycle that you pedaled through muddy ditches. Shaun didn’t ride his bike in the mud.

You are getting ready to be pulverized by a hungry dump truck, and now you're thinking about what a wonderful gift life is.  You’ve always known it, of course, but when you’re looking at the very spot where your last breath is going to be squeezed from your lungs it hits you extra hard. 

You’re not exactly sure if Someone gave you life, or if you just fell evolutionarily bassackwards into it but suddenly you’re overwhelmed by this thought. Life. Is. A. Gift.  And here in this garbage bin that will soon empty its contents into a death hole, you think to yourself - It would have been a disservice to Whoever or whatever was responsible for this gift if I hadn't taken it out of the package and played with it, enjoyed it, even crashed it. I don't regret dying like this.

You've lost any real hope for an escape, but still it seems best to try and crawl up through a shifting waterfall of empty shampoo bottles and Glad trash bags.  It's a shame you won't survive this, you think, because it would have been one of the most epic Coveted Dollar Exchanges ever.  And suddenly your fingers find the rim of the dumpster and latch on. 

As the debris plunges downwards you somersault out of the side of the garbage bin, half triumphantly, half disgracefully, and land on your side.  The asphalt cuts deep into the skin on your elbows, and you look up just in time to see the huge-heap-of-shit-that-was-your-bed get reduced into something about the size of a toy box.  You scramble out of the way as the two huge forks on the back of the truck return the bin, now emptied, to its rightful place on the asphalt.

You look down at the arm you landed on; it’s bleeding.  For one second you wish you were more like Shaun. Why can't you be the kind of person who is careful with this whole LifeGift thing.  But you know you can't be. There would be no enjoyment in that. Life only has worth if it is taken from its package and pushed with reckless abandon down a road that YOU made, never mind the paint chipping off or the axles loosening. This Coveted Dollar business is proof that you're not one to protect the gift.

Some people sleep better when their gifts are securely hidden from the world. They look at how safely they sit up on the shelf or in that plastic sleeve and it gives them a sense of satisfaction.  But life, you think, is not a collector's item.  It can’t be enjoyed if it’s kept in a plastic sleeve. What does it say about how much you like your gift if it's still in the box on a shelf -  if it's in mint condition? 

These are the kinds of things you think when you felt sure you were going to be dead but you aren't.

You feel very much alive now as you watch the trash truck pull away still chewing its trashmeal.  You march up to the flat where the rest of your band is sleeping. The flat could belong to anyone, but you know that the band will be there. Someone offered up their living room after the show last night.  It was there that Joe decided, after a couple cases of beer disappeared, that The Coveted Dollar could be yours if you were up for sleeping in that dumpster out in the parking lot.

Wake up! You say.  You swing open the door and yell into the tiny room.  It’s done!  The Coveted Dollar is mine.  Hand it over, Joe! You throw a black sharpie at the sleeping bag with Joe in it. 

In your head The Coveted Dollar already has your name written on it right next to George Washington’s head and then the words Crashed In A Garbage Bin.

It’s early, they say, rubbing their eyes. Go back to bed…er dumpster.  And then they all laugh.  Two of them are wrapped up in sleeping bags on the floor.  The others are curled into balls on couches.  


They have no idea that you just about died trying to get The Dollar.  They don't know how special this day is now. They don't know it's a gift you just about didn't get to open - just about didn't get to take out of the box and wreck.  


Joe speaks up.  Just because you crashed in a dumpster means we have to get up with the sun?

Yes.

(The Coveted Dollar is still in rotation today.  It has been passed on to a younger generation of bands from Springfield, Missouri.  For those who prefer to take the gift of life out of the box and play with it carelessly, this bill still gets circulated.  It has convinced guys to do everything from sleeping in dumpsters to making naked snow angels to running naked through respectable parties.   For those of us who believe that life is not a collector's item its true worth cannot be calculated in dollars.)