Saturday, December 5, 2009

On Garbage Cans

WARNING: THIS MAY BE TMI FOR YOU. If you are easily offended, please feel free to skip this post.

Garbage cans have many uses, the primary one being for garbage. Usually, garbage cans are made of metal or plastic and can vary from tiny (usually at least 8" high though, and at least 6" around) to huge (dumpster, anyone?)

Usually, I use garbage cans for trash. However, once I had to use them as a coordination lesson, as I was throwing a bag of garbage in the industrial sized bin downstairs and somehow my keys got ripped off my fingers and flew into the bin. Several spiders crawling over me, a near-panic attack, and several car alarms later (all false, as I tried desperately to use a broom handle to lever my keys up and out of the bin, and accidentally pushed the car alarm with the head of the broomstick instead of getting the broomstick to fit within the keyring), I successfully retrieved them.

Garbage cans also have other uses, as well. Unfortunately, sometimes they serve as the receptacle for something else - not nearly as pleasant as trash. Like today, for example, I was trying out makeup at a store with a friend. She's a spa technician/artist by trade, and she was giving me a free makeup consulation. Later, I'll have to show you what she did to my eyes. Wowser! I started feeling lightheaded, so I just sat down on the floor. She was working on my eyes, and I was having a hard time concentrating on what she was telling me about how to smoke my eyes. I bought a few pieces, and on the way to the register I felt like leaning over and putting my head between my knees. I was grateful for the excuse to bend over to sign the credit card release.

We exited the store and had not gone twenty steps before I said I felt a little sick and I needed to find a garbage can. There are nicely lined garbage cans everywhere, as it is a mall, but I couldn't see any. Only a poor unlined garbage can with a lot of Pepsi drinks in it. I had my eye on it, thinking maybe I could make it to the restroom. Nope. I'd walked all of three steps past it when I turned around and grabbed it. I'll leave the graphic stuff out...except I will say that due to Mom's training when I was a kid, I am very neat about such things. And I hardly disturbed my makeup with eye-watering, either. Amazing!

So the point of all this is that I am very. Very. VERY grateful for garbage cans. In all shapes and sizes, lined and unlined. For the things in them? Not so much, usually. But yes. Garbage cans are great. May they prosper in the land.