Pictures From Afar

A picture is worth a thousand words. I don't have a picture for this story so a thousand words will have to do.

It was Monday morning and the trash was ready to be taken out. The responsibility for that job has been assigned to me ever since Becki took one glance at the apartment's dumpster. I decided that I would just bring the trash with me as I left for school and drop it off at the dumpster. I carefully walked towards the dumpster with its rotting food and dirty diapers that had not made it inside. Several feet away from the dumpster I took one last breath before I made it any closer. Not wanting to get my whole hand dirty, I grabbed the gate to the dumpster gingerly between my forefinger and my thumb. It caught on something so I rattled the latch back and forth. I finally forced open the gate. Immediately, I jumped back as an enormous rat ran out of the garbage. I quickly threw my trash into the dumpster and tried to close the gate. While I was trying to shut the door, another rat jumped from the other side and ran across the pavement. I had had enough of these rats so I left the door open and briskly walked to the end of our street so we could get back on our way to school. As I walked away I doused my hands in hand sanitizer solution sickened by all the trash and the rodents. With that episode still fresh in my mind, I waited at the corner for our bus to pick us up. As we waited, an elderly man came slowly riding by on his bicycle. He turned onto our street and came to a stop in front of the dumpster. Getting off his bike, he opened the gate and walked straight into the garbage. Every once in a while I would see his arm poke out with a glass beer bottle placing it in the basket on the front of his bicycle. It's like they say, one man's trash is another man's treasure.