Seeing Yellow
It had been there six months, taunting him. At first it had stood alone, next to his bike. Then, as if by mystical trash magnetism, it was joined by cans, bottles, trash bags, banana peels, and other objects that had been tossed aside to rot. It was a simple object, a small tupperware container. It sat there inconspicuous yet still slightly out of place. Each time he passed by it, he wondered how it had come to be there, who had tossed it aside and why? Had it been forgotten in an act of innocent amnesia, or left there deliberately in defiance of any trash codes or ordinances?
One afternoon as he was bringing his own trash downstairs, he noticed a piece of paper posted on the wall: āPlease remove all trash by the 7th of July! Violators will be fined!ā He had wondered how long the building management would tolerate the unofficial trash heap in the corner of the garage. Turns out, about half a year. Finally, he thought, the tupperware would finally cease to exist in the universe. He had seen enough of it and could not wait for the day it no longer attacked his visual senses.
As the 7th of July drew closer, the pile of refuse grew smaller. Things were looking good, he thought. No, things were looking great. On the evening of the 6th, he lay down in his warm bed, content with the knowledge that tomorrow would mark the end of a dark period, in which trash anarchy had ruled supreme, and it had seemed as though entropy had all but vanquished any sense of order or reason. A new dawn would break, one of peace and strict adherence to rules and regulations. He fell asleep to visions of white neon lights illuminating the austere beauty of a trashless garage.
The next day, he slipped on his birkenstocks and excitedly hurried downstairs, much like a child on Christmas morning. He threw open the heavy metal door to the garage as lights in the ceiling started sputtering before casting their cold white light into the underground space. His head snapped to the trash corner, not unlike a bird of prey. Except he didnāt hunt rodents or small birds. His target was trash. Or rather, trash where it didnāt belong. And lo and behold, it all appeared to be gone. Finally! Order! Cleanliness! All was right with the world.
But wait.
What was that? Could it be? He squinted and began to approach the corner.
Sure enough, there it was, rudely, and somehow almost proudly protruding from the shadows. Naked, offensive, vulgar, a petulant trouble maker that refused to go quietly into the night: the tupperware. He plodded over, squatted down and took a closer look. Who would abandon such a thing? Discard a tissue, a piece of paper, perhaps even a banana peel or an apple core, sure. But a plastic container meant for re-use? It made no sense. He couldnāt make out what was inside, and didnāt want to pick it up for fear of contracting some strange disease. Who knows what odd organisms could exist on the surface of such an unsavory thing?
Robbed now of the premature joy he had felt only moments earlier, he was unsure what to do. All choices he faced had drawbacks. He decided to leave the container where it was for the time being, thereby giving the owner a last chance to remove it. The owner might not be in the garage very often, if at all, and possibly had not seen the notice from management. Still, he was fuming. The fact that all other trash was gone made it even worse. The tupperware stuck out like a sore thumb against its otherwise sterile surroundings. Against his better judgment, he turned around and went back upstairs, leaving the plastic container as it was.
A week passed, and each day, he went down to check if, by some miracle, the container had disappeared, and each day, he was greeted by the repellent tupperware, thus dashing his hopes and filling him with renewed frustration and dismay. Finally, on the 7th day, he was on his way to his motorcycle, and caught the tupperware in the corner of his eye. He decided enough was enough and marched over to the container. As he picked it up, he heard and felt some sort of liquid sloshing around inside of it. Not my problem, he thought. Though just as he was about to toss the container, contents and all, into the dumpster, he stopped.
It was a nice container, after all. His mother had said one could never have too much tupperware. Okay, he thought, Iāll just dump out the liquid here and bring the container up to my apartment. On the count of three. One, two, three! He began to open the lid of the tupperware, but tragically, his hand slipped, violently ripping off the lid and sending the container and its liquid flying, as if in slow motion, directly towards his face. As the cold liquid splashed across his face, the acrid acerbic smell assailed his olfactory senses. It was the unmistakable stench of urine, of piss.
Well that wasnāt worth it, he thought.