29. Revenge is fucking sweet
Used to have a neighbour that put their extra bags of garbage out next to mine. This might not seem like such a big deal, but it was nearly every week, and our municipality had a 2 bag limit – if you had extra bags, you had to put a sticker on them (purchasable for a mere twenty-five cents) or they would not be picked up.
So, every week, I would go out (after putting my two cans out the night before) and find that there were extra bags of someone else’s garbage left behind.
It took a long time to determine who the guilty party was, and a couple of extra bags each week added up. I would put on my rubber gloves, open the mystery bags, and sift through them, trying to find identifying information. It was very frustrating, because every week, there was nothing. I knew that the culprits had kids, because there were always dirty diapers. I knew that they were disgusting, lazy, sons-of-bitches, because every bag was full of styrofoam plates and plastic cutlery, which they apparently found more convenient than washing dishes – hence their production of surplus waste every week.
This went on for a ridiculously long time. I would sift through their bags, be disappointed, rebag their garbage, and then grudgingly store it in my garage, with the only other option being to pay for surplus stickers to take it away. Happily, we didn’t have a car, so there was lots of space in the garage.
Then – one fine August day, it happened! A bill! A bill was in the garbage! A bill with an address on it, writ large. Finally, I knew the household which was responsible for all the extra garbage. The cheapskates that could not find it in their budgets to affix the mere twenty-five-cent stickers for their surplus waste, and instead sneakily put it out in their neighbours’ yards. They were three doors down, and across the alley.
I waited for their van to be gone, and then went over to their gate, opened it, and placed all their garbage carefully back in their driveway. Since fair is fair, and I was already obliged to handle their garbage and rebag it, it I emptied it all out and took my bags back, leaving their six months’ extra garbage in a heap in their driveway.
I don’t think they ever worked out who had had their revenge on them, since it was pretty clear that they were leaving extra bags for everyone who shared an alley with them – but that was the end of their illegal dumping. It does give me some satisfaction to know that, even if I had to handle and re-bag their garbage when it was fresh, they had to re-bag it after it had been fermenting for months in my non-climate-controlled garage. Pricks.
