And so, late one night, a stranger came to my home wanting to riffle through my trash. It was the lucky ebay winner with the $1.78 in hand. A ceremonial exchange was made after a short speech and many a shed tear. Simply put, someone had paid me to take my trash. I love America.

The story however, does not end there. My trash would continue to improve the lives of countless others. The winner of my trash is a middle school language arts teacher and she had big ideas for my garbage. She planned to have her students write some descriptive essays on the content of my trash and what it meant to them.

She took her purchase back to the school, possibly similar to the one pictured here, where the students discovered the wonders of other people's garbage. I'm in the process of getting a few samples of the students essays, but until then, here are some excerpts that I made up which kinda sound like they may have been written by the students:

• "The trash was easily the coolest thing I have ever seen! And I've been to the Grand Canyon!"
  
  
• "My teacher reached into the trash bag and pulled out a an empty apple juice bottle; I cried. It was the most beautiful sight I had ever seen."
  
  
• "The trash seemed to be speaking to me in much the same way that my oven at home speaks with me. Also, the toaster and blender speak to me. They fight with each other sometimes about politics. In fact, most everything speaks to me. They're always talking. So many voices. Always talking to me. Voices...TALKING!!

As you can see from these fake quotes, the children's lives were obviously improved from their brief exposure to my trash. This brief exposure also caused them to contract hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.

This is where the story comes to a tragic end. That evening, as the bag lay on the teacher's desk, the good intentioned night janitor entered the room and ignorantly mistook the items as trash, which he then proceeded to throw away. In the morning, the garbage was gone, and it was too late to save my trash from a horrible life under a future golf course.

In the end, truth scripted a better conclusion than fiction. I can think of no more a fitting journey for my garbage than to impact people's lives for good, and then end up in a land fill next to toxic paint and discarded murder weapons.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Find more information on becoming a janitor.
send comments to: goat@magicgoat.com
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Special thanks to all the bidders!