The Garbage Man
Every year on this date I get a letter from the Garbage Man.
I opened up my mailbox this morning and underneath the 117 thank-you letters I got for donating to PBS there was a familiar red envelope with an upside-down stamp. I took it inside and opened it up with my nice letter-opener with the carving of the pineapple on the handle. The letter said,
I'm the Garbage Man and I'm gonna trash you! I live in the landfill and I'm gonna drive out in my big old truck vroom vroom and I'm gonna put you in my can rattle rattle and I'm gonna throw you in my truck crunch crunch! You're gonna go in the trash 'cause you're not recyclable no more!
I get a letter like this every year. They always say more or less the same thing. I never worried about them before. It was probably just one of my old college buddies having a laugh. But this time, I wasn't so sure. I poured myself a glass of milk and dropped five or seven whiskey stones in it. I hate drinking watered-down milk.
Last week I visited a fortune-teller named Madame Fitzwilliam. She was tall and black and had long fingernails and short hair and she had lots of ankle bracelets on her ankles but not wrist bracelets on her wrists. She didn't have a crystal ball. Instead she filled a bowl with milk and dropped in five or seven whiskey stones. She stared into the bowl. She said, "Every person has five or seven lives to decide whether they're going to be good or not. If they decide they're not going to be good, then they go deep into that darkness we like to call 'Eternal Oblivion.' I sense, using my fortune-telling ability, that you have made that decision very recently." She raised the bowl to her lips and drank. "I also sense, using my fortune-telling ability, that this is going to play havoc with my IBS."
I asked her what she used to get dried-up milk scum off her whiskey stones. She said she used a Brillo pad.
The week before that I had to bury something heavy and awkwardly-shaped in my back yard. It was cool, clear night. I had to dig for several hours. The heavy and awkwardly-shaped thing I buried in my back yard used to be two things: alive, and my wife. Now it only one thing in a hole in my back yard.
I finish my milk. I hear a vroom vroom coming up my street. I rattle the five or seven whiskey stones in my empty glass. I'm not gonna get a chance to clean them with a Brillo pad. I'm not recyclable no more.
Credited to tiremanora
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