Skip to main content

The Garbage Truck Test

 




I think it’s safe to say...  if you drive, you’ve been personally victimized by a garbage truck.

And if you live in a neighborhood?
5:30 a.m. becomes a horror movie.

You hear them before you see them.
That low mechanical growl rolling down the street like judgment.

And your brain goes...
Did I take the garbage out?

Because if you didn’t…
Congratulations, you’ve just been sentenced to three more days of consequences and quiet shame.

But the real test isn’t forgetting the garbage.

It’s getting stuck behind the truck.

Always at the worst time.
On the way to work.
On the way home or to something you’ve already decided matters more than whatever is happening right in front of you.

And suddenly…you’re in a life-or-death situation involving banana peels. You start negotiating with yourself...

If I just inch left…
If I time this right…
If I channel a little Jason Bourne energy…

Maybe I can slip past.

This morning, walking with Rosie and Benji, I watched three different drivers attempt what can only be described as suburban stunt driving.

One tried to swing around the truck like it was a NASCAR turn.
Another crept halfway into oncoming traffic like a polite criminal.
And one…
God bless this man…just drove directly onto someone’s lawn like he had diplomatic immunity.

The old me would’ve understood. Yeah… that’s aggressive… but I get it.

The new me? I just stood there thinking:

Are we okay? Like… collectively?

Are we so allergic to slowing down that we’ve started treating neighborhoods like obstacle courses?

Because here’s what I saw that I never used to see...The sanitation workers.

Not as obstacles. As people.

Jumping on and off the truck.
Lifting. Dumping. Moving. Repeating.
House after house. Street after street. Day after day.

No shortcuts or applause. Just work.

Good work. The kind of work that keeps everything else in our lives from piling up.

And there we are behind them, gripping the wheel like they’re personally attacking our schedule. Like their job is happening to us. Like the five minutes we’re losing is more valuable than the hours they’re giving.

It hit me standing there, dogs watching all of this with me...

We don’t just rush past garbage trucks. We rush past anything that asks us to slow down.

People. Moments.
Conversations. Our own lives.

We keep trying to get around things that might actually be here to ground us. Because slowing down feels like losing.

But what if it’s the only way we actually arrive? What if the real problem isn’t the garbage truck…

…it’s that we’ve built lives where five minutes of stillness feels like a threat?

Where being delayed feels like being disrespected. Where even a man doing his job becomes something we need to escape.

I can’t shake that we spend so much time trying to outrun inconvenience… that we don’t realize we’re also outrunning perspective. Because while we’re flooring it over someone’s lawn to save sixty seconds-

someone else is standing on the back of that truck,
doing the same hard thing they did yesterday,
and will do again tomorrow…so our mess doesn’t swallow us.

And maybe the most honest thing I can say is I used to think I was stuck behind garbage trucks.

But now I wonder…

how much of my life
I was just trying to speed past
the very things
that were cleaning me up.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wooden Tulips

  Wooden Tulips T he first time I was ever really afraid- the kind of afraid that makes your body cold from the inside out- was the night Sadie was born. She was supposed to come on Valentine’s Day. Of course she didn’t. Sadie and Erin are both stubborn, so naturally she showed up early. I remember kissing Erin’s forehead, paper hearts taped to the hospital window, me rehearsing the one job I’d been assigned: cut the cord. I was ready to nail it. Dad of the Year. Opening scene. Cue applause. And then- she was here. Tiny cries, a flurry of nurses, scissors in my hand, cord cut, done. Erin was drifting in and out from the C-section meds, crying, laughing, floating. I was waiting to hold our baby. Our brand-new everything. And then a nurse leaned in. Whispered. “I’m sorry. I think your baby has Down Syndrome.” That was the first thing anyone said about my daughter. Not “She’s beautiful.” Not “Congratulations.” Just: I’m sorry. I didn’t even know what that meant yet. How could she k...
3 comments
Read more

The Jacket

E very man has one item of clothing his wife has begged him to throw out for years. Mine was a light-blue jean jacket with a fake white cotton collar. Erin hated that jacket with the kind of passion most people save for politics or pineapple on pizza. I’d had it for years. Presidents had come and gone. My career had risen, collapsed, and tried to rise again. Our kids had grown taller than Erin — which isn’t saying much, but still. And through it all, that jacket kept hanging by the door like a stubborn dog that refused to die. It was hideous. I can admit that now. The collar looked like dirty clouds glued on by a kindergartner’s craft project gone wrong. The denim was the exact shade of regret you get when you bleach jeans one cycle too many. And still - I wore it everywhere. School events. Grocery runs. Parent-teacher conferences. Probably even funerals. It wasn’t clothing. It was my emotional support jacket. Erin tried everything: gentle hints, sarcastic digs, quiet donation runs tha...
3 comments
Read more

The Spirit of Division (and Why We’re All Being Played)

  W e hear stories all the time about the supernatural—miraculous healings, near-death experiences, strange whispers in the night that make even skeptics pause. But how do we know what’s real? That’s what investigative journalist (and former atheist) Lee Strobel asks in his new book Seeing the Supernatural . He dives into evidence of the unseen world and invites us to consider something both ancient and terrifyingly current: What if God really does still rule over the spiritual realm—angels, demons, all of it? And maybe that’s where we need to start. Because the real battle today? It’s not just political, cultural, or ideological. It’s spiritual. We like to think politics is about ideas—policy, vision, leadership. But underneath the hashtags and press conferences, something darker is happening. Something feeding on us. Every election cycle, every argument at the dinner table, every “unfriend” click on Facebook— it all fuels a spirit that thrives on outrage. That sp...
Post a Comment
Read more