Friday is rubbish day in my town. That's the day, once a week, when along with your normal household garbage you can put larger items out by the curb. Furniture, old TVs, mattresses... you name it. Since Friday morning is when the garbage men pick up the rubbish, that makes Thursday evening prime time for...
the Night Pickers.
Night Picker? What the fuck is a night picker?
Night Picker is a phrase coined by my dad and sisters and me to describe the folks who walk or drive around the neighborhood the night before rubbish day and pick through the trash in hopes of finding some treasure to cart off and call their own. It's not dumpster diving; it's got nothing to do with food. It's about taking that perfectly good something that someone three blocks away is throwing out, bringing it home, cleaning it up and calling it your own.
I was raised in an upper middle class neighborhood, and that's the kind of neighborhood I live in now. You'd be surprised how much perfectly good stuff people simply throw away.
The next town over from me is wealthy. You should see the amazing shit they put out by the curb.
I think the fact that people are so quick to discard things has much to do with our very conspicuously consumptive society and what middle class means today. Years ago, something like a bike was a treasure. A decent one cost a good amount of money to buy, and it got handed down from kid to kid. Too bad for you if you were the last kid in your family. If it broke, either your dad fixed it or you took it to the bike shop. But you didn't throw it away.
Now, more often than not it seems people just toss that same bike out and buy a new one. Why not? Bikes and TVs and DVD players have become so inexpensive that it almost makes sense. Plus, I think we have gotten so used to buying new stuff to replace our other stuff that fewer and fewer people know how to actually fix anything anymore.
I am not ashamed to say that I have night picked a thing or two in my time. An end table with beautiful wooden inlays that was missing only a small detail on one of the legs. I placed that side against the wall. Another time, as I was walking our ridiculously tiny dog I spied a Weber grill that someone across the street was throwing away. Mint condition. Although I made quite a racket wheeling it across the street, scared the hell out of the dog and probably woke up several neighbors in the process, I still fire up that grill in the backyard today.
The legions of night pickers are many, and the treasures to be gotten are legend.
But this is not about night pickers, at least not directly.
Nope, this is about little girls growing up.
Because last week I myself put something out on the sidewalk Thursday night for pickup on Friday.
I put out the high chair.
The high chair that endured countless yogurt spills and still has a little piece of spaghetti stuck in that crevice that I just couldn't reach no matter how hard I tried.
The high chair that bears the the faintest remnants of scribbles from markers and pens because no matter how I scrubbed, it never all came out.
The high chair that witnessed thousands of laughs and giggles and almost as many tears.
The high chair that heard me make every sound imaginable, from airplanes to elephants, that might encourage a little girl to open her mouth and take one more bite.
The high chair that held a baby safely while her daddy got a sorely needed cup of coffee.
The high chair that wobbled a little near the end, who's seat cover never fit quite right again after I took it off that first time to wash it.
The high chair that has seen two little girls begin to become big girls.
Yeah. That high chair.
The trash men come at around 8:30 in the morning. I could easily have put it out then. But I didn't. Somehow I couldn't bear to see them throw that little piece of my girls childhood into the back of the truck.
So I put it out the night before.
And sure enough, by 6:00 am Friday morning it was gone.
I'd like to think that someone took it home, cleaned it off, and called it their own. Maybe some dad somewhere else is making elephant noises to his little girl right now.
Bonne chance, Night Picker.
Bonne chance.
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