In the Slingerland household, it has historically been the
husbands job (aka ‘me’) to take out the garbage and recycling on Wednesday
nights. When Thursday mornings dawn, the
household wakes to the peaceful cooing of mourning doves and the rumble of the
waste management vehicles (aka ‘garbage trucks’). This narrative did not exactly happen this
week.
Thursday Morning:
The mourning doves began their beautiful ‘ode to morning’ on
the sill outside of our window on this fine frosty November morn. The husband finds the gentle cooing of the
doves melodic and soothing. What a great
way to wake up in the morning!
The wife is not an ornithologist, but rather an
ornithophobic. The wife does not like
birds (though she does like the golden roasted varieties that come out of
ovens).
“If those birds wake me up again tomorrow morning, I am
going to glue their beaks shut!”
The husband chuckles at his wife’s sense of humour – what a
kidder he married!
The wife’s school starts earlier then the husband’s school,
which means that she is out the door earlier.
As the husband got ready, his wife kissed him goodbye, glared
maliciously at the majestic dove on the sill, and left.
The husband was knotting his tie when he heard a dragging
sound. He wondered what that noise could
be. He then heard the far off rumble of
the garbage truck. The husband looked
out the window and noticed with great alarm, that the wife was dragging the
garbage out to the curb. The husband had
forgotten to take out the garbage and now the wife, who was nicely dressed (and
had smelled nice up to this point), was bringing the garbage out. The husband felt bad not only because of the
wife doing the husband’s job, but also because she was already running a little
late. The husband thought of ways to
make it up to the wife. He racked his
brain. He looked around and finally
spied the dove on the sill. He imagined
his wife’s delighted face as he presented her with a stuffed dove in a shadow
box or something. The dove seemed to
sense the change of mood and flew off.
The husband’s attention turned to the plight at the end of
the driveway. The wife had put the
garbage in place, but was now staring at something at the end of our
driveway. During the night, the wind had
blown the neighbour’s garbage bags over to our driveway and were now blocking
the wife’s way out. The husband briefly
reflected that maybe it was blessing in disguise that he forgot to put the
garbage out seeing as how the wind wreaked havoc on the neighbours’ garbage.
The husband probably should have run out to help clear the
garbage bags from the end of the driveway, but he was paralyzed with suspense. What would the wife do?
The wife turned and headed back to her car with a determined
look on her face. The husband had seen
that determined look many times before.
Her car roared to life and the headlights flamed brightly. The husband held his breath as he watched the
wife rocket out of the driveway. The
garbage bags put up no resistance as the car backed over them and plowed them
out of the way. The husband noticed that
one of the bags was flattened like a pannekoek and the other one was caught in
her front wheel-well.
The husband could almost see his wife’s slender foot stamp
the gas pedal to the floor. The venerable
car shot forward like an Atlas missile.
The garbage bag stayed with the tire for a couple of revolutions and
then was discharged into the air. It flew
from the car and came to rest on the curb (albeit quite a ways away from the
intended place on the curb). After the
cloud of exhaust smoke cleared and the wife’s green machine careened out of
sight, all was as it should be in the peaceful neighbourhood.
Epilogue
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