Pam was pretty nauseated by the whole experience but I was finding some awesome loot so she stayed and kept watch. Some of the treasures I found were: old encyclopedias, porn magazines, an old stapler, file folders, a bong; all the stuff a ten-year-old girl needs. I had a pile of the goods next to the dumpster and was still inside trying to gather all of the books into a moldy, damp box when I heard the beeping sound. You know the sounds big trucks make when they back up? I peeked up and out of the dumpster just in time to spot the garbage truck heading right for our dumpster (cue sickening realization). Apparently, he had emptied the dumpster at the other end of the lot, backed up and was headed to empty ours! Pam bailed on me, and surprisingly, for being short and stubby, she sure moved like a running back during the last play of a tied Super Bowl game.
Well, instead of me making the intelligent decision to get the heck out of dodge before I became compacted with yesterday’s coffee grounds, my stubbornness reared its ugly head. I was determined to get those damn books if it killed me, so I crammed the last couple in the box and tried to hoist it up and over the edge at the exact time the truck met the dumpster and put the prongs into it. The driver had seen me peek up, but he had intentions to scare the foolishness (shit) out of me. The driver and I had a stare-down. I was almost daring him to flip the dumpster. It was a stand-off; a dirty, relentless game of chicken. I was afraid of so many ridiculous things, but at that precise moment, in my warped, undeveloped ten-year-old mind, I was only afraid of losing the shit I’d foraged so hard for. Well, the weight of the 30 or so books I had jammed into a wet cardboard box was too much and the box broke loose before I could get it over the edge. At that time, the garbage man decided he was going to fuck with me one step further. He started to raise the dumpster ever so slightly and though I’m about as pigheaded as they come, the thought of being crushed one bone-snap at a time was horrifying enough for me to admit defeat by hopping out and running over to Pam’s house.
Unfortunately, Pam was a little sissy-narc and had already ratted to her mom because just as I got there her mom came out of the house screaming something about what a bad influence (if she only knew just how much) I was on her child and I needed to go home immediately.
By the time I had trudged the five or so houses home, my mother was laying in wait and just like a crime-scene detective, had her scratch pad of interrogation questions ready. I should have known she knew, because like mother-like daughter, Pam’s mom was quite the rat fink. Even at the mere age of ten, I was quite worldly, but at that moment I wasn’t attuned to my mother’s knowing or that Pam’s mom would have called and tipped my mom off. After all, I was still mourning the loss of the fortuitous cache that I had just lost to a cackling, depraved garbage man. As soon as I crossed the threshold, my mom started the questions in a rapid-fire succession.
Mom: “What were you doing at Pam’s?”
Me: “Playing.”
Mom: “Where were you playing?”
Me: “Outside.”
Mom: “What were you playing outside?”
Me: “Looking for treasure.” (No lies yet)
Mom: “Why are you so dirty?”
Me (eye roll): “Because there is dirt outside, mom.”
Mom: “Why are your hands so dirty, especially?”
Me (yelling now because I’m getting so annoyed with all of the questions and I just want to go back to my grieving): “Because mom, I was digging for treasure. Outside. WITH my hands!”
Just as I was feeling pretty good that I had bluffed my way through that whole debacle and turned to go up to my room, mom grabbed me by the shoulders and screamed. IN MY FACE. She blasted that I was a little liar and that she knew everything. She also threw in that I could have died or been eaten by rats and that I had probably caught the bubonic plague or some other equally fatal disease, etc. She then proceeded to drag me upstairs to our only bathroom and run the hottest bath where she then made me strip into a trash bag so that she could throw my clothes directly into the garbage can. As soon as I was thrown in the scalding tub, I thought my skin was going to start peeling away. The water was just shy of boiling. Mom also threw a gallon of bleach and some Borax into the blistering bath for good measure. She wanted to be sure that any open wounds I may have had on my prepubescent body would ignite and make me writhe in such pain that I would begin to wish that the rats had gotten me instead. Mission accomplished…
