Trash Man Jesus

As I’ve done every Christmas since I moved out-of-state in 1995, I returned to my suburban Denver home for the holidays this year. On Christmas Eve-eve, we were sitting having coffee in our jammies when my mom jumped up, “the trash guys are here!” She bolted out the front door into the freezing Colorado morning – no coat, no shoes – clutching a small white envelope. Moments later she returned, cheeks kissed pink by the cold, smiling from ear to ear. “I wanted to give them something extra, they do so much for me throughout the year.” My “trash guys” back in California do a lot for me throughout the year too, and I appreciate it, I really do – lord knows I don’t want to have to haul my trash to the dump once a week in my Civic – but we’re strangers to each other. I wouldn’t even know if it would be okay for me to run after the garbage truck in my jammies or if they would call the West Hollywood police on me.

Later I pulled my mom’s trash cans into the garage (something I never did when I actually lived there) and I noticed something stuck into one of the handles. Thinking it was perhaps an errant piece of holiday wrapping, I pulled it free and realized it was an envelope addressed to my mother. It was from “Trash Man Jesus,” wishing my mother a Merry Christmas.

What?! I can understand a world in which neighborhood residents do a little “something extra” to thank city workers for doing hard, sometimes unpleasant jobs and I’m proud that my mother is one of those people. But a world in which city workers leave holiday cards for those along their route? That’s just nutso crazy town Stepford County. Not that a Stepford County full of pleasant, grateful, thoughtful people would be a bad thing, its just that it’s so far from what I experience on a day to day basis that its hard for me to comprehend fully.

Before this whole episode, Eric reminded me that we should leave something for our mail carrier – even though there’s a different postal employee loading the mailboxes whenever I go downstairs – so I left a Starbucks card clearly marked “for USPS, thank you!” But upon returning after over a week of holiday visits, we found the card still in the mailbox, untouched. We can’t even get a partial, one-sided pseudo utopia started over here. I want my own Trash Man Jesus.

Maybe in 2009...gretch