...One of them garbage people...

I remained thoughtful of the hardworking mechanics about to invest their time in maintaining my vehicle by looking around my car for trash. "They deserve better," I thought as I reached for an old McDonald's bag in the backseat and its counterpart orange juice beverage leaking in the cupholder. Cup in the bag, (half-empty or half full?) I reached for the driver's side door compartment where I had been saving used tissues in case of, literally, a spitting emergency. Filled to the brim with soiled Kleenex, balled up McDonalds' wrappers, half full, 3 day old orange juice and refuse fit for the King of Smokey Mountain/Tondo, I scanned my perimeter for the nearest trash receptacle. Maybe a steel one would be appropriate for garbage in this state? These isotopes are a-decaying and not a single Rubbermaid in sight!

Feeling my panic, mystery mechanic reached his hand out like the God that is painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Humbly I called out, "Please do not worry, 2nd Christ, this time I will pay for my sins," but from my mortal coil, it sounded more like, "Uhmm, no it's okay, i'll find a trash can." My brother insisted that he carry the remains of my support of globalization/high caloric burden (choose one depending on your politics) and in stoic silence, he grasped the mouth of this fast food carcass. As the weight shifted from my proprioceptive system to his, I could feel IT, like a tracker with their ear to the ground, I knew what was about to happen, but only by seconds. As if lead bullets were thrown onto a scale of circumstances, the bottom of the bag split open like Athena from Zeus' skull, pouring tepid and sticky orange juice like it was Niagra Falls and haling units of stiff tissues like a December day in San Francisco. I watched like an OBE, Out-of-Body-Experience, the contents of this makeshift trash bin out of a friendly McDonald's bag gremlin that pops out those pustuled and vicious gremlins when it gets wet, they exploded all over the mechanic's Reeboks (Were they Reeboks or were they Filas? Who wears Filas nowadays though?...) That moment was proof that slow-motion existed outside of Sports recaps (Do they still do those slow-motion recaps?) and in that moment from trash diarrhea to man's porous shoes, I didn't realize that such a small cup could contain so much liquid. Had I even sipped on that orange juice or did some Catholic demon switch out my small McDonald's drink for a container of Super Gulp proportions?

Stewing in my shock, my apologies were absent, but before I slipped into a laughing hysteria, (In the discretion of my friend's economy car) I just had one thing to say to this former savior subjected to my human waste, "Ooooh, my bad!" With no reaction to the events, he swept away the previous contents of my unmentionable time capsule like a professional, perhaps like it's happened before, suspicious...I mean really, dude, I just spilled like 8 oz. of bacteria Atlantis all over your kicks and not even an eyebrow raise like you're stoned and you hear something in the distance except it's really nothing because you're just paranoid? Okay, it's whatever, I guess...

So just to recap, you can choose your adventure!:

Long-term thinking/Chaos Theory: I had a cold, but still had to get around, so I brought tissues in the car for excretions of that nature. A week later, I was working and going to class non-stop that day, I was famished and on a budget, so I stopped into a local fast food joint. My poison, being a small orange juice, just wasn't a good fit to that day like I thought it was so I left it in the car. Continuing with my work and being busy for the whole week I suddenly remembered I need to bring my car to the service place in my neighborhood for repair. Trying to make things more comfortable for the mechanic helping me, I collected visible trash before I left my vehicle with him and in went the orange juice and tissues. As I was handing my trash to him because I did not see a trash receptacle, the bottom of the bag became soggy and all the trash fell through and the entire orange juice splashed all onto his shoes.

or Short-term thinking/Reductionism: Got to the car repair place, didn't want to look like a slob so wanted to throw away Mcdonald's crap. Put in orange juice that I didn't drink, but the top of orange juice unloosened, thereby soaking the bottom of the McDonald's bag that was containing trash, like crispy tissues from when I was sick. When I was handing the trash to him after not seeing a trash can, the weight shifted and the orange juice spilled all over his shoe for literally 60 seconds. I said, "Oooh, my bad!" and then jumped into my friend's car while laughing and processing what just happened.

The lesson that I took away from this was to never, ever brandish your empty, or not so empty, McDonalds' trash to anyone, maybe not even your inner circle.

--True story from San Francisco, Spring 2009