Recycled vanity makes for fresh embarrassment

It’s come to my attention that if you’re going to embarrass yourself, it’s going to be in front of your neighbors.

Neighbors are sort of like a pseudo family, aren’t they? You see each other every day, so by proximity alone, if you do something stupid, they’re going to be the ones to see it. Same way accidents happen closest to home because you travel there most often.

My wife and I are coming up on our first year anniversary in our house, and in that year, I’ve marked a few incidents as embarrassing moments in front of the neighbors.

The primary one and subject of this Happy Trails occurred a few months ago now, when it was still cold and snowy and windy. Actually, I seem to live at the epicenter of a wind tunnel, so the wind never ceases, but it is the main antagonist of this story, so I decided to throw it in there with the snow and cold, both of which compounded the events that follow.

(And if you’re wondering why I’m writing a winter tale at the beginning of summer, it’s because I can be very exacting in ways and had to wait until I completed a year in our new house, or nearly a year—to be exact—to see if anything topped this one; none have.)

It was garbage night, and I did my manly duty and took the trash out to the curb. An hour later, the wind stirred up, and I grew skeptical the cans would make it through the night. The recycling bin had already inched a few feet up the driveway. I wasn’t really concerned about the trash can. If it tipped, there was only a heavy bag in there that I didn’t think would go anywhere. So far, it held steadfast, only its lid shuttering in protest. The recycling was what concerned me. Loose, light waste product. I had visions of finding, what suddenly seemed like very personal trash, flying around the neighborhood, leaving passersby and neighbors to wonder about my consumer/dietary habits.

Vanity stricken, I marched back outside and hauled the recycling back up the drive and wedged it between the front of the Sun Day’s delivery van and the garage door. It fit tight. I pulled on it, kicked it once, nudged it a few times, and went back inside content it wasn’t going anywhere. I’d drag it back out to the curb in the morning.

Morning came. I looked out the window, and sure enough, the garbage can tipped in the night with the bag still safely inside. Good. My vanity secure. The wind was still pretty strong, but the trucks would be around soon enough, so I went outside to set the garbage to rights and bring out the recycling to join the fight against the wind.

I righted the can, but when I went to retrieve the recycling bin, to my horror, I found it wasn’t where I left it.

That’s when I noticed it was actually on the side of my house, between my and my neighbor’s houses, laying on its side and not a single piece of trash inside. All at once, my fears of the previous night hit me in full reality when I saw where all the trash had gone: Everywhere. On the side of my house, in my next door neighbor’s yard, my backyard neighbor’s yard, their next door neighbor’s yard. Flat pieces like envelopes were even stuck in my neighbor’s fence, which, thank goodness was there, otherwise the sky literally would have been the limit to where my recycling would have gone. Despite the cold and wind and snow, my face flamed.

I ran back inside my house, grabbed a couple bags, and dashed outside like a lunatic, wearing pajama pants, a winter coat hanging open, a pair of hiking shoes, the ridiculous grey knit hat of a few Happy Trails ago that I named The Ear Flap Hat. Vanity be damned. I raced around every yard in view, collecting my recycling (in my mind, hearing the neighbors say, “Oh my, he buys that?”), my jacket splayed open in the wind, pajama pants rippling like a worn flag, ear flaps flying, cheeks rosy from the wind, cold, snow, or my embarrassment, I don’t know. I was like Clark Griswald and Cousin Eddie rolled into the same box of crackers.

The funny thing about embarrassing moments is if no one saw them, we feel the need to tell people about it. Of course, a story is controlled and editable, but we never fail to incriminate ourselves with, “You would not believe the stupid thing I did the other day.”

Several weeks after the recycling incident, my wife and I were talking to our next door neighbors, rehashing the story, when they said, “That’s why we use bungee cords.”

“Oh,” I said, “never thought of that.”

“But don’t worry,” they told us, “we all learned that lesson the hard way.”

Since then, there have been a few windy garbage nights that warranted bungee cords. However, I’m not certain the garbage men are thrilled with my preventative measures. The first time I strapped down our lids, I found a bungee cord in the middle of the cul-de-sac. Not in the middle of the street in front of our house (we live on the corner), but in the actual middle of the cul-de-sac). I can only imagine it was thrown there. The second time I used the bungee cords, they both were gone when I collected the empty bins.

---