Garbage, garbage, who's got garbage....

I live in a house obsessed by garbage. Or, more accurately, I live in a house with people obsessed by garbage. Spouse's obsession is expressed by expending an unbelievable amount of energy in avoiding taking out the garbage. MIL on the other hand can’t wait for the night before garbage day - she begins before dinner to scratch through the recycle bins, eyeing the neighbours ‘curb-sides for evidence of blue or black boxes, and packing up every stray bit of tissue, newspaper and flotsam into the bins. Topher, however, makes her look like an amateur. He is obsessed beyond all proportion with garbage and garbage trucks. We have, at last count, 5 toy garbage trucks – a virtual fleet – complete with toy garbage cans, bins and skips. And toy garbage. Yes, that’s right, toy garbage. My life is not complex enough, not full of enough crap, that I can’t find myself on a regular bases twisting bits of tissue, newsprint, cotton balls and foil into little teeny tiny crumpled up balls for Topher to use to fill up the toy garbage cans, bins and skips, which are then lined up on the living room floor for the fleet of toy garbage trucks to drive by and empty. And we aren’t done yet. No, despite having the afore mentioned fleet of toy garbage trucks, my eldest is bereft, deprived, crippled even, or so he tells me, by the fact that he does not possess a side-lifter garbage truck.

And this is not all. No, not by a long shot. In addition to the fleet of trucks, the crumpled up bits of pretend garbage and the various miniature bins, cans, and skips, he also must PLAY garbage. This entails loading up his boy-sized blue recycle bins and his boy-sized trash cans – all of which are housed IN MY LIVING ROOM – with sofa pillows, the morning’s newspaper, toast crusts and anything else that isn’t nailed down and then the show really begins. He “drives” the garbage truck (aka the sofa) complete with terrifyingly realistic sound effects, climbs down out of the “truck” to pick up a bin and toss it into the “hopper” (aka the other end of the sofa) before climbing back into the truck, starting up the compressor and the hopper, and then “driving on” to the next stop on his route. And god help any of us if we want to either sit on the sofa during this time, read the paper, or have a cushion to perch on.

As if this wasn’t enough of a zoo, now Winston has joined in. The other morning I found him sitting on the sofa, arms held out in front of him as though gripping a steering wheel and heard from his mouth the unmistakable sounds of vrrroooooommmm, errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt, sshhhhhhhhhhhhhht beeepbeeeepbeeep – the sounds of the garbage truck on its route – while Topher tossed the contents of bins out onto the sofa next to Winston. HE IS ONLY 17 MONTHS OLD FOR CRYING OUT LOUD!!!!

So you can well imagine the excitement this morning when the garbage and recycling trucks lumbered down the street. There, sitting on our front porch still in their jammies and munching on toast, were my two blond haired obsessive compulsive angels (and their Ouma), waiting and watching the trucks going about their business. The boys shouted and waved at their heroes and were rewarded by honking horns and return salutes...life for my boys will never again be the same, for surely, in their minds, it can’t get any better than the day the garbage men honked the truck’s horn and waved at them.

Ah well. I console myself with the idea that winter will soon be upon us and it will be too cold for the boys to sit on the porch waiting anxiously for their heroes to ride up the road....but by then they will have a new hero......the snow plow driver. For the record, I am drawing the line at making pretend snow.