MY TRASHMAN

 

I was finishing my daily one hour walk a few days ago. It was around 630am, and a few minutes after sunrise.

As I was completing the final several hundred yards of my walk a garbage truck passed me, and stopped to collect some small tree limbs which had been put out by the curb.

The lone garbageman was working quickly, but seemed to pause momentarily as I passed on his left. I looked his way, smiled and said,

“Hello, how are you this morning?”

To which the young man replied,

“I’m good. Thank you, Sir.”

“Thank you, Sir”?

I was a bit surprised with his courteous response. Perhaps I had, without realizing it, unconsciously stereotyped the “kind” of people who ride on the rear end of garbage trucks.

I mean it can’t be the most desirable of jobs, certainly not the most prestigious, nor requiring much more than a second grade education, and I tend to think the pay scale would hover pretty low on the totem pole.

I mean, how many little boys have ever mused,

“When I grow up, I want to be a garbageman!”

And how many young and middle-aged men in the profession ever said,

“Well yes, thank you. I ride on the back of a garbage truck 5 days a week, and I darn well wouldn’t have it any other way!”

But this young man smiled from ear to ear, and he was just so polite. Not exactly what I was prepared for.

Pt. 2

As I passed the trash truck it suddenly rolled forward, and I watched it as it disappeared around the curve; just fifty yards from my home. The young man was standing on the lip of the compactor, and holding onto the steel handle which “hit” him at about waist level.

As I rounded the curve, I was a minute and a half from the completion of my morning walk. Now, I was home and walking across the yard to my front door. In the meantime, I had passed the truck again in the performance of its duties. And it occurred to me that the young man, with whom I had exchanged pleasantries, noticed as I unlocked the door, and disappeared into the house.

An hour or two later I had something to do in the front yard, and it was then I saw it; something which I had never before witnessed.

Whereas, my trashman had ALWAYS emptied my yard trimmings into the truck, and tossed the plastic trash cans haphazardly into the yard, the three empty cans had been neatly stacked into each other.

I had no way of knowing whether this was the usual method of operation of the young trashman, or whether realizing this was the home of the older man who had previously greeted him so warmly, he had made a momentary decision to “give as good as he got.”

In Matthew Chapter 7 Verse 12 we read,

“Whatsoever you would that men would do to you do you even so to them.”

The Golden Rule

If it is good enough for my local trashman, by golly it ought to be good enough for you and me.

by William McDonald, PhD. Copyright pending