The other day some dirty bastard stole the lid off my garbage can. Damn it that pisses me off.  It was the lid to my super good can too, one of those that Rubbermaid makes appropriately labeled “Brute.”  That thing is indestructible.  It’s my secondary can though because it’s a little heavy.  Our primary can is constructed of light gauge plastic.  It can’t take the pummeling from my garbage men like the Brute can, but it’s easier to take to the curb.  Not that I need that accommodation.  It’s a consideration I have for my wife.  I’m not a dick and make my wife haul out the garbage cans.   I always do that.  Sometimes she tries to look busy by fiddle-farting around with the recyclables, but I’m the one that does the heavy lifting.  But I worry that someday I won’t make it back from my mountain hike after a boulder pins my arm against the side of the narrow canyon I was walking through, and she’ll have to move the trash cans around.  I like to think ahead.

So I had to set both trash cans out for pick up because we had extra garbage that week.  There is a 50 pound limit per can, and if you overshoot, the garbage collectors can tell real quick.  It comes natural after you lift something heavy on a regular basis.  Then they take it out on your garbage can and fuck it up real good.  I bought one of those fancy cans with wheels once.  Not a month went by when one of the traveling sanitation experts gave it a good toss and shattered a wheel.  That kind of pissed me off because I had taken some extra time to re-distribute some really stinky garbage between the two cans so neither would exceed the 50 pound limit. I suppose the dead squirrel I stuck on top could have set him off.  I probably should have bagged it up and dusted off some of the maggots.  Those make a nice treat for the birds.

Well anyway I walked up and down the street, thinking maybe a gust of wind had come up and carried away my lid,  That is not an unnatural occurrence, but such was not the case this time.  I have a neighbor that’s kind of shifty and thought maybe he stole my lid, but that notion turned out to be a dead end.

I don’t need to tell you an unnatural rage was boiling inside of me at the thought of having to spend money on a new heavy duty trash can when all I needed was a new lid.  I got a little depressed and started thinking what a shitty deal that was and how fucked up the world is.  My mind began to wander into dark places.  I started to imagine all the cruel ways I could get even with the scummy son of a bitch that stole my trash can lid if I ever caught him.  My favorite involved a butane torch and a high torque electric drill.  I even waxed philosophic, pondering that great existential question “Why do bad things happen to good people?”   Most everyone in my neighborhood think I’m a pretty decent guy. OK there was that one time I told my neighbor on the back side of my fence to go fuck himself.  But who wouldn’t be upset when someone sprays weed killer that drifts over to your property and kills all your garden radishes.  In the end he saw I was right and apologized, so I’m pretty sure even he would agree anyone who steels a thrash can lid is a smelly piece of shit.

So I thought real hard about why bad things happen to good people, and it really didn’t take me long to figure that out.  The reason bad things happen to good people is there are too many assholes walking around that do bad things like steal your trash can lid.  The sooner we get rid of them the better.  Problem solved.

I didn’t recall ever seeing lids sold separately anywhere, but I was confident if such a thing was available it would be at my favorite hardware store.  It’s a Westlake Ace store about a mile from my house.  You may have read about it in Plumbing and Stuff.  Neither the owner, Mr. Jimmy, or Roxy, the most helpful hardware store employee ever, was there, so I had to settle for Fred and it turned out they were out of Brute trash cans but he was not aware that the lids were sold separately anyway.  Well naturally that just enforced my thinking about all the injustice in the world and I headed off to Home Depot and then Sears because they  were right on my way to my favorite liquor store.

Both of those places had Brutes, but they wouldn’t sell me a lid separately.  They cited their one can /one lid policy and it had to do with inventory control and their precious scanning guns and all that shit I really didn’t want to hear about.  Well I was just getting more worked up about the whole thing after that.  Lowe’s was right on my way home so just for the heck of it I stopped in.  Plenty of Brutes and lids there of course, but there weren’t any bar codes on the lids so I was pretty sure I was out of luck.  But I ran into Roger, or rather he ran into me with the forklift he was driving.  I guess you could say it was my fault since I snuck under the “Isle Closed” tape that spanned that isle, but god damn it I get tired of that.  Every time I go to Lowe’s they’re dicking around right in the place I need to get to.

Roger jumped off his fork lift and said he was real sorry and all that.  He had run over my foot, and it really did kind of hurt, but I was pretty much concentrating on my lid problem right then.  I explained how shitty my day was going, so he shuffled through the Brute lids and because there was no bar code on any of them, at first he said there wasn’t anything he could do.  But then after he noticed me limping around he had a change of heart and told me to just take one.  He even escorted me to the exit door.  Do you believe it?  Didn’t cost me a dime!  I don’t have a picture of Roger but he looks something like this, only he had clothes on at the time and isn’t this white.

Roger Driving His Fork Lift

But on the way home I was struck by the second half of that existential equation- “Why do good things happen to bad people?”  Obviously what had happened to me at Lowe’s was definitely a really good thing.  The odds of running into a clerk that is remotely helpful,  let alone a nice guy, are slim in the first place.  But a nice guy that is willing to go the extra mile and risk unemployment just to make me happy?  Those are long odds my friend.  So was I a bad person because something good had happened to me?  As I have pointed out there is a variety of corroborators  who will vouch for me if I slip them a Hamilton.  I have always believed I am a good person, but suddenly I was doubting myself.

By the time I got home I had that conundrum all  tidied up.  The guy that gave me my trash can lid ran over my foot too. I think I’ll lose a nail.  So good to bad- that was a wash, and then of course there was the really bad deal of the stolen trash can lid that started this whole thing.  Like always, if I think on something long enough it starts to make sense.  That was two bad things to one good thing. That is pretty much the exact ratio of how things work out for me.  If you do that math right, you have to conclude I’m nothing short of a good person.

A lot of us get this whole business of good and bad happening in the world all complicated by throwing God into the mix.  But for that you have to believe there is such a thing, and if you take a look around you have to wonder about that.  A lot of bad shit happens, and it’s not just an occasional circumstance.  Right now we have Aleppo and ISIS and suicide bombings, and plane crashes, earthquakes, tornadoes and floods have been going on forever.   That’s lots of bad stuff and some of it I guess you could blame on God if He is actually up there somewhere. Or you can go the other way and say all this horrific shit just proves there is no God.  You can hardly blame a fellow if he thinks that’s a bunch of bull.  Personally if I were God I’d run things a little differently.  What is troubling is a lot of what’s bad is carried out in the name of someone’s god. That is totally fucked up.

I think what you have to do is carry on the best you can and throw in a helpful hand now and then.  My plan is to play it safe and not bet against Pascal’s Wager, and then die and see what happens.  Or not.  And if there truly is a reward that awaits, I’m not so much interested in whether its a place where we get to live it up all day drinking single malt scotch or simply experience peaceful bliss floating around on the clouds.  I just want to be there and make sure the slimy shit ball that stole my trash can lid gets the fiery compensation he deserves.  Merry Christmas!