Upon entering my tiny casa each eve, I carelessly toss my thick ring of keys onto a little ledge. The sort of ledge that frames a random glassless window smack in the middle of a big open room.
On this particular eve, underneath the ledge (cue threatening music) sat a gaping Whole Foods bag stuffed with old magazines ready for the dumpster.
And, to the dumpster they went.
A big industrial sort of dumpster on site for nearby renovations.
A green mammoth of a dumpster that requires a few wind-up swings just to launch a bag over the top.
Enter in the intervening hours: a mischievous kitten. One best known for objecting to closed doors and batting all manner of personal and decorative items off of tables, shelves and ledges onto the floor.
Getting ready to leave the next day, I searched the upstairs and downstairs for my keys – digging in pockets, peering under cushions, patting down blankets, even opening the freezer just to be sure. No sign. I snagged the spare car keys and set out.
Upon returning, I resumed the hunt. Not an inch unturned, I concluded that they were not in the house. Two theories presented themselves – the paranoid and frightening vs. the genuinely unlucky. Either I had left them dangling in the lock outside (far from unprecedented) and a tricky neighbor had whisked them away. Or, the mischievous kitten had batted them into the Whole Foods bag and thus they were waiting in the dumpster.
A restless night later – punctuated by panicked dreams of a stranger keying in and loosing my pets in the snow – I decided to investigate the dumpster.
No ladder. Just a thick, stinky green steel wall nearly twice my height.
I pulled myself up on a ledge to get a closer look. And, lo and behold a bright star appeared … or, rather, a beaten and bulging Whole Foods bag covered by only two relatively intact plastic ones. The dumpster nearly empty, they were all a long way down.
Clad in my dog walking gear – nylon jacket, jeans, brightly striped boots – I tied my faithful old dog to a nearby stake and sought a stick. Balancing halfway up the side of the dumpster, I dug for my sack, but couldn’t get leverage. So, back to the house for a golf club.
This time, I caught the bag’s handles and even as they ripped, I was not thwarted. I pulled harder to tear the paper and reveal more of the contents … including my keys. Salvation was near!
Now, faced with all manner of charges and fees to gain new entry to my office, car and home, I decided to go for it. I scaled the side of the green beast and leapt in.
The cold was not enough to dampen the smell. But, still I snatched my frozen keys and got ready to climb out.
No traction, though, nothing to hold onto and the big steel wall opened only well above my head. Still a crafty little dumpster diver, I stacked some bags of various refuse and boosted myself onto the filthy lip. From there, a clean white pile of snow broke my fall and I was off to get ready for work…
With an excellent excuse for being 15 minutes late…
Darn, I don't even go in those dumpsters and I work around them all the time! I can actually say that I know exactly what it was like though and I know it is not pretty in there!!
By the way, that must have been a heck of a pile of snow to brake a fall from that high! Quite impressive.
Posted by: Clay | December 13, 2005 at 03:28 PM
Were you laughing at yourself the whole time? It reads like a great, comic movie scene. Yuk, yuk, yuk ...
Posted by: Alison | December 14, 2005 at 11:40 AM
Rats, and here I thought you were turning into an old school hacker! Still, I'm glad you found your keys and I'm also happy that my cat is too bloody scared of everything to be influenced by what he might learn reading over my shoulder...
Posted by: Douglas Nerad | December 26, 2005 at 02:52 AM