Trashy

Every place you live has its quirks.

At my old place I had James (James; Laundry). Back in college my friend Tim was woken up every morning promptly at 7 am to the sound of Jimi Hendrix’ Star Spangled Banner at top volume from the room next door. My friend Jason used to go to the bed listening to very distinct and audible squeaky springs from the bedroom above him.

Now I moved back in May and I expected some period of time where I would have to get used to weird noises and habits of my neighborhood. But I never imagined this…

Every Tuesday night (garbage is picked up on Wednesday mornings) the Laundromat across the street from me take out its garbage. At 11:30 pm. Okay, that’s fine, right? I mean, whatever. But, despite being a seemingly successful Laundromat with quite a bit of trash and two dumpsters, someone from the Laundromat takes the laundry out to the curb bag by bag and box by box. They could have someone just come and empty their dumpsters for them, but instead they choose to take out the trash themselves and by hand. And just to make sure you have the picture here, I am not talking about two or three bags of trash. Oh no – it’s more like 30 and another 30 or so boxes of trash. It’s like a full city block taken up with trash!

Now you could be saying to yourself, “Get over it. Maybe they’re just cheap asses who want to save a buck by taking their trash out by themselves.”

Perhaps. But the hour at which this activity occurs leads me to some other conclusions.

• Bill (a fictional character, I swear), the owner of the drycleaners uses chemicals at his drycleaners that were banned by the government in 1963. He is scared that is a truck roughly empties his dumpsters, the trash receptacles and trucks will explode, killing the garbage men and drawing attention to the illegal chemical use.
• The dry-cleaning is just a cover. Really Bill is running a murder-for-hire business and uses the drycleaner dumpsters to dispose of the bodies. He chops up each body into many, many bits and disperses them among many trash bags. He then carefully transports the bodies to the curb, being careful that no body bits fall out.
• Bill has a crush on the girl on the second floor of the apartment building across the street. One Tuesday he almost forgot to take out the trash and had to do it really late at night. He noticed that the beautiful girl on the second floor watched his every move from her window and in her pajamas. He has taken out his trash late at night every week since hoping to get a glimpse of the girl.