Trash Can Mystery

We share two rolling trash bins with the people downstairs that sit in the back of the house. Every Monday night, the bins get pulled to the curb for trash pickup. We noticed that every time we went to take our garbage out and opened the lid of the trash bin, there would be random pieces of unbagged garbage just sitting on top: an empty cereal box (Special K), used kleenexes (crumpled into balls), an opened tray of uncooked chicken breast (Gold'n Plump), floss (surprising). It looked like they would get up and walk outside every time they had something to throw away. Seems a little inefficient, but whatever. We were already weary of their ability to properly use a garbage can, so this only added to our theory. The stench coming from these bins is overpowering, especially in the summer when unbagged food sat cooking in the hot sun all day. I developed a strict procedure to follow every time we needed to take a bag of trash out. It requires a balance of strong hand-eye coordination and quick movement, and I have detailed it for you below.

Step 1: Take a deep breath and hold.
Step 2: Standing as far away from the trash bin as possible, open the lid about six inches high with your left hand. Leaning backwards or looking in the other direction, while impractical, helps prevent the smell particles from getting on your face.
Step 3: With the trash bag held in your right hand, swing it backwards to build momentum and when it begins to swing forward again, direct the bag at the opening of the trash bin with force.
Step 4: Here is where your hand-eye coordination comes into play. Right as the bag is about to hit the opening of the trash bin, you must simultaneously throw open the lid with your left hand AND throw the bag in your right hand so that it shoots upwards and into the trash bin. Caution: you should only throw the lid open with enough force so that it creates a large enough opening for the trash bag to fit through, but not so hard that the lid opens all the way back and remains open. The goal is to let gravity slam the lid shut after the bag goes in (and for the noise of the lid to mask the girly-scream that you cannot suppress no matter how embarrassing or how hard you try).
Step 5: Run away. Resume breathing only after distancing yourself by a minimum of 20 feet.

I have taken the liberty of illustrating Steps 3-5 for you, as it is the most difficult part of the procedure:

I have way too much time on my hands today.

This strategy worked well for a few solid weeks. But, as what happens with most of my foolproof plans, a series of events unfolded that I had not thought about and my plan became ... er, non-foolproof (what's the opposite of foolproof?). It was a particularly muggy and humid day in the dead of summer. It had been raining on and off. I was doing some sort of cleaning because I somehow had amassed several bags of garbage that needed to go outside to the bins. These bags were not ordinary bags of trash either; they were heavy as shit! I must have been organizing and discarding our rock collection that day or something. As I dragged three bags of trash down the stairs, I began to question my standard procedure because I knew there was no way I could lift one of these bags with one arm, let alone swing it about. I have the upper body strength of a tyrannosaurus rex. So, when I finally got outside, I stood there staring at the trash bin and staring at the three bags of garbage sitting next to it. I could already smell the pungent odor just waiting to pop out from under the lid as soon as I lifted it. Because it had been so humid that week, I was sure whatever treasure the people downstairs had left in the bin was reeking up a storm. I decided that I couldn't adhere to standard procedure. Step 5 called for running away and with 3 bags of trash, that was just too much running and backtracking. Instead, I decided the fastest way to get through this was just to open the lid all the way back, brace myself for the stench, and chuck the 3 bags in as fast as I could before closing the lid again. It was risky, but I really had no other choice. I needed both of my t-rex arms to lift one  bag!

I took a deep breath, placed my hand on the lid, and with one swoop, threw the lid all the way back. It is key that once the lid is open, you do not breathe for fear of passing out from the fumes. You anticipate the smells. You also anticipate the possible sight of foods in various stages of decay. Sometimes a squirrel even pops out at you. What you don't anticipate however, are gleaming, white maggots covering every inch of the inside of the garbage bin - lid and all. I don't remember the smells because I was too busy screaming at the top of my lungs and swatting away what I was convinced were actual maggots all over my clothes and in my hair (anywhere but the hair!). I left all three garbage bags strewn about on the driveway, the maggot-infested bin wide open, and I skipped to Step 5. I ran the fuck away.

I ran into our apartment and cried. A little melodramatic? I still maintain that the answer to that is no.

After about 15 minutes of calming down in the confines of my maggot-free apartment and another 10 minutes of inspecting for rogue maggots who may have found their way into my clothes/hair, I worked up the nerve to go back outside. I don't know what I was expecting, but they were still there. Crawling around, being creepy, licking crap. I tossed the garbage bags in the bin really awkwardly (I didn't want the force of the bags to shoot the maggots out at me) and found a stick on the ground to flip the lid shut with. In hindsight, using a flimsy tree branch to close a heavy plastic lid was unnecessary and probably counter-productive, but you wouldn't have wanted to touch that lid either!

That evening, I composed a very polite and nice note to the people downstairs requesting that they use garbage bags. It was such an odd thing to write out in a sentence to another human being who was not 4-years old. This whole maggot thing happened very early on in our neighborly relationship, so I still had hope that we would be friends. I didn't want them to think we were mad. If only I knew then how pointless that all was. We received an apology note the following evening from Girlfriend who actually sincerely sounded like she felt bad. She stated that they will definitely be using garbage bags in the future and the reason they hadn't been doing so was because their garbage can was broken. (?) Apparently, they had been dumping their trash straight from the garbage can in their home into the trash bin outside, with no use of a bag. To this day, we still can't follow Girlfriend's note. If your garbage can was broken, wouldn't the obvious thing to do be to use a garbage bag instead? If you are still able to use your garbage can, is it really "broken?" And in what way would your garbage can need to be "broken" in order for you to forgo a garbage bag and use the garbage can in the exact same way as before? It is a bewildering mystery that I ponder every time I re-tell this story. If you have any idea what she was talking about, please share it with me. I welcome all theories.