The Strangest Thing

Dashed this one off to try telling a trashbagging story from a different perspective - that of a clueless neighbor who helps set out the garbage.  Pure fiction..

Something strange happened where I live and I felt I just had to write it down so that maybe it would become clearer. Guess I better provide a bit of background in case I share this with someone.

I live in a typical suburban community of similar houses. We have rear entry garages with driveways to an alley. The development is new so few of the trees are tall and most of them are in the front yards. Most of my neighbors are young couples who leave every morning to commute to work. There are a small number of us who work from home using the cable company's fast Internet service. That means we don't see our neighbors much because even on weekends they go out to do shopping, restaurants, etc.

That said, we get along well, and being home and often out walking my dog, I sort of keep an eye out for things they might need to fix but are likely to miss. As I always say, a problem left unfixed only gets worse. I guess I am the local Angie's list as I keep track of good contractors to help them out. I also pet sit and they can call me if they need their child picked up from school or they forgot to set out the trash by the alley when they left for work. Why do I do all this? I get a lot of free barbecue and beer and meet people.

Well that's enough background. On to the strange events. I have one neighbor, a young woman, who often travels on the weekend and returns Monday night. Since Monday morning is our trash collection day, most people set out their wheelie bins in the alley on Sunday evening. About once a month, she will call on Saturday night and ask me to wheel hers out to the alley, she forgot and left it in the side strip between her house and her neighbors. I don't mind, she is a bit of an exhibitionist and I have seen her in her garage filling her trash bin when I walk by in the alley with my dog. It seems she likes to go nude in her house and just takes the trash out without bothering to cover up. I figure the view I get is fair payment for rolling out her bin, even though it is often heavy.

Well, two weekends ago, on Friday evening, she was there, naked and tossing a bag into the bin. She saw me and just waved and then turned and bent over to pick up a second bag, wiggled her ass and stood to toss it in and force the lid down. It was quite a sight, but she went inside and closed her garage door. I was sort of hoping she would invite me in for something more exciting than the view, but no luck. The next night she called to ask me to roll out her bin on Sunday night. I did, and it was another heavy one. I heard a noise inside when I thumped it down in the alley, and since the lid was partly open I figured an animal had gotten in while it sat beside her house. I opened it and saw those last two bags were still on top so I mashed them down, closed the lid, and latched it.

The truck picked it up and dumped it Monday morning and she was home and taking it inside when I met her in the alley doing my dog walk that night. I told her she needed to latch down the lid in the future, and her eyes got really big as she stammered to reply, "Yes, thank you." She hurried off to her house, apparently upset but I still don't know why.

So one week later, I was talking to another neighbor and she remarked how strange the young woman had been acting. She had spoken to her and it seems she lost her boyfriend. The guy had just gone away and not said a thing, vanished. And he had left his car parked in front of her house. Of course it had been towed away by now, the neighborhood requires guests have a parking tag if they plan on staying more than two days.

So last weekend, there I am walking down the alley and I see her garage open and there she is, naked, dropping a other bag in the bin inside her garage. I wave, and she smiled and gave me a full frontal view I won't soon forget. But as I started to walk up to speak, she ran over and closed the garage down. Oh well, guess it's not to be. And then on Sunday morning she calls and asks me to set out her bin again. Even asks me to latch it if she forgot.

So Sunday night I go over and there it sits in her side yard. It's not latched so I look inside and see lots of Styrofoam on top of a big black bag. I latched the lid down tight and rolled it to the alley. It was heavy, but not as heavy as the one the week before. But it made a noise when I set it upright so I was glad I had latched it so no animal could get out. I got a text from her early Monday morning telling me she would be away for some time and to please set the empty bin up by her garage.

I went over to do it right after the pickup so I could still get online early on Monday and had to wait while the truck came down the alley. It's one if those side grabber trucks that pinches each bin, lifts them high up and dumps the garbage into the big compactor on the truck. I waited while it picked up her bin and watched it lifted and tipped. I wanted to see if I could spot the animal falling in. All I saw was the Styrofoam, then the big black bag and then two smaller ones, like kitchen trash, topple in. As the truck crushed the load, I could hear the Styrofoam crunch and snap, so when the empty bin was set back down, I rolled it up to her garage and set it there to await her return.

It's now Friday night, her garage is closed and I am wondering how long she will be away. The empty bin is still there so she's not come home. It's really rather strange.

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26.06.15